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 sold 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 part of its national territory. France vetoed a 1976 UN Security Council draft resolution recognising Comorian sovereignty, and the UN General Assembly passed a series of non-binding resolutions on the "Question of the Comorian Island of Mayotte" until 1995, since when it has not taken the matter up. 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 it fully under French and EU law.

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 on which an estimated 12,000 people have died — and about a third of the island's residents are thought to be undocumented. Water shortages became a crisis in 2023, and in December 2024 Cyclone Chido devastated the island, flattening informal settlements: 40 people were confirmed killed with dozens more missing, most shanty towns were destroyed, 85 per cent of the island lost power, and local officials called it the most violent and destructive cyclone since 1934. Reconstruction has been slow, and in July 2025 the French Parliament passed a law to "refound" Mayotte and tackle its poverty.

Mayotte is around 97 per cent Muslim, and Islam — Sunni, of the Shafi'i school — 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 — the Comorian institution of prolonged celebration and the exchange of gold and gifts — is a major social occasion. 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. Mataba — pounded cassava leaves stewed with coconut milk and eaten with rice — is the traditional Mahorais dish, served in quantity at weddings, and pilaou, a fragrant rice pilaf from the Zanzibar archipelago, is eaten across the Comoros, alongside fish grilled or cooked in coconut milk and the cinnamon, vanilla, and other spices the islands have long grown and traded.

Beredre, a fried bread, and cornet buck, little brioche cones filled with meat and sweet potato, are local staples, and the street food is grilled skewers of chicken, zebu, goat, or fish eaten with bata-bata — cassava, green banana, or breadfruit boiled or steamed — with a chilli sauce and pickled vegetables. Puddings are less central, though there are caramel coloda and makarara, biscuits of flour, coconut milk, and vanilla, and mango, lychee, guava, and passion fruit in season.

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 come ashore in their thousands each year to nest on its beaches), 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 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, whose mineral-laden waters are unfit for swimming, and the old administrative quarter of Dzaoudzi, linked to Pamandzi by a 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.