ABSTRACT
Africa and the Indian Ocean region share a long and fertile history that includes human migration, social relations and cultural exchanges, commercial relations and maritime trade, as well as being integrated to the same European colonial networks. The Swahili culture, which spreads from Kenya to the Comoros Archipelago, evidence of Indonesian ancestry and cultural inheritance found in Madagascar, and the Indian-based communities now present in African states, all testify to the long-lasting links between Africa and the Indian Ocean. However, centuries of colonialism followed by decades of neo-colonialism and cold war have profoundly altered and weakened the relations of the Indian Ocean African peoples with their counterparts of the Indian Ocean region. It also left the recently independent African states facing very serious social, economic and political difficulties that greatly limited their ability to develop and prosper as well as deterring their participation in and limiting the benefits from the worldwide economic globalisation process. As a consequence, the African littoral of the Indian Ocean largely remained poorly integrated to the reinvigorated Indianoceanic regionalism process that has been emerging since the 1990s and building through many initiatives, including the Indian
Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC). However, this is now changing as the African states develop interest in and relations with the rest of the Indian Ocean. In addition, the African littoral is becoming a land of promise for new economic opportunities.
