Meet the “Mwani Mamas,” a Group of Zanzibari Women Changing Their Lives Through Seaweed Farming

Their plan worked. Today, the Mwani Mamas are the first generation of women in Zanzibar to achieve financial independence. They make around $250 to $300 a month, nearly double the minimum wage—and about seven times the amount they made previously. Mwani also provides them with full benefits, including maternity and sick leave, flexible schedules, continuous training, and flexible loans for big-ticket items like homes. As a result, they’ve become respected leaders in their community. They can not only afford to buy food and clothes for their families, but many have also invested in “divorce houses,” i.e. backup houses they can move to if and when their husbands leave them. The mental peace these houses have brought them is priceless. “As a woman in Zanzibar, you have to have a backup house because you can’t guarantee marriage here,” one of the Mamas, Patima Haji Pandu, told me through a translator on my first day on the main island. “So if you can’t afford to build one, it’s really stressful because you don’t know where you’ll go. If you have a backup house, though, there’s no more stress, because your husband can say, ‘I’m done with you,’ and you can say, ‘Fine. Goodbye. See you.’ And then you just move. And it’s so freeing.”