Mayotte

Mayotte is part of the volcanic Comoros archipelago and shares its Swahili-coast Islamic history: Bantu-speaking settlers, Arab and Persian traders, Malagasy migration, and a series of small sultanates. In 1841 the Sultan of Mayotte ceded the island to France, ahead of French protectorates over the other Comoros islands later in the century.

When the Comoros moved to independence in the 1970s, the three other islands voted to leave France; Mayotte, in referendums in 1974 and 1976, voted to stay. The Union of the Comoros has never accepted this and continues to claim Mayotte as occupied national territory, a position long supported by the United Nations and the African Union; France rejects it. In further votes Mahorais chose ever closer ties, and in 2011 Mayotte became France's 101st department and, in 2014, an EU "outermost region", bringing French law and the euro.

Departmentalisation raised expectations far faster than living standards, and Mayotte remains by a wide margin the poorest part of France, with GDP per head a fraction of the national figure. It is also a magnet for migration from the Comoros — many people cross the 70-kilometre channel in small kwassa-kwassa boats, a route that has cost thousands of lives — and undocumented residents may number in the tens of thousands. Water shortages became a crisis in 2023, and in December 2024 Cyclone Chido devastated the island, flattening informal settlements and causing widespread destruction and loss of life.

Mayotte is around 95 per cent Muslim, and Islam — Sunni, with strong local Sufi and devotional practice — shapes daily life, dress, and the calendar, alongside respect for spirits (djinns) and traditional healers. This makes Mayotte culturally distinct within France, and questions of laïcité, family law, and polygamy (now legally ended for new marriages) have been sensitive.

Society is matrilineal in important respects: house ownership and residence often pass through women, and the elaborate grand mariage remains a central social institution, involving prolonged celebration and the exchange of gold and gifts. Women's bright salouva wraps and msindzano (a sandalwood-paste face decoration) are everyday sights.

Music and dance — the women's deba and wadaha (the "pestle dance"), and mgodro — mark ceremonies, and Shimaore and Kibushi carry a rich oral culture. Village identity is strong, and inter-village rivalries have at times turned violent.

Official figures put the population above 320,000, making Mayotte one of the most densely populated parts of France, though the true number is higher and uncertain. Roughly half the residents are foreign nationals, mostly Comorians, and many live in bangas — self-built shacks — in informal settlements, large areas of which were destroyed by Cyclone Chido.

The economy is dominated by the public sector and by transfers from the French state and the EU; formal private-sector jobs are scarce, unemployment is very high, and much activity is informal. Basic services are stretched: schools run in shifts, the single hospital is overwhelmed, electricity and water supply are unreliable, and the 2024 cyclone set recovery back years.

For most Mahorais, daily life revolves around the extended family, the mosque and Quranic school, the market, subsistence farming and fishing, and the constant pressures of poverty, migration, and, since late 2024, rebuilding.

Mahorais food is Swahili-coast and Comorian in character, based on rice, cassava, green banana, breadfruit, and coconut. Pilao (spiced rice with meat), fish grilled or in coconut sauce, and mataba — cassava leaves pounded and stewed with coconut milk — are everyday dishes, seasoned with the cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon that the archipelago has long grown and traded.

Mkatra foutra (a soft fried bread), bajias (split-pea fritters), samosas, and ambrevades (pigeon peas) are common, and grilled skewers and cassava chips are the street food. Sweets include coconut and banana cakes and nkatra theluji.

There is little alcohol, in keeping with the Muslim majority; the drinks are sweet tea, coffee, fresh coconut, and fruit juices, with trembo (palm wine) made in some areas.

Mayotte's defining feature is its lagoon — one of the largest and deepest enclosed coral lagoons in the world, wrapped by a barrier reef with a rare stretch of double reef. It holds turtles (green turtles nest at N'Gouja beach on Grande-Terre), reef sharks, rays, dolphins, and, in season, humpback whales, and diving and snorkelling are the main visitor activities.

On land, Mont Choungui is a steep, near-conical peak in the south with a panoramic climb over the lagoon, and the interior has patches of remnant forest, crater lakes, and ylang-ylang and vanilla plantations — Mayotte was long a major producer of the ylang-ylang essence used in perfume. The îlot de sable blanc, a sandbank in the lagoon that appears and disappears with the tide, is a much-photographed boat trip.

Petite-Terre has the Dziani Dzaha crater lake, an emerald-green volcanic lake near the airport, and the old administrative quarter of Dzaoudzi with its boulevard des Crabes causeway. Tourist infrastructure across the island is minimal, and any visit at present has to be planned around the recovery from Cyclone Chido and the security situation.