African islands

The islands have three origins. Madagascar and the granitic Seychelles are fragments of the old supercontinent of Gondwana: Madagascar split from Africa about 160 million years ago and from India about 88 million years ago, and the Seychelles granites were left behind when India moved north. That is why both carry ancient rocks and ancient lineages of plants and animals.

Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues and the Comoros are volcanic, built by hotspots in the mantle. Réunion's Piton de la Fournaise and Grande Comore's Karthala are still among the world's most active volcanoes. In the Atlantic, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Saint Helena are also volcanic, rising from the ocean floor far from the mainland.

Coral grew on top: fringing reefs and lagoons around Mauritius and Réunion's west coast, and whole atolls such as Aldabra in the Seychelles, one of the largest raised coral atolls on earth.

Isolation produced species found nowhere else: Madagascar's lemurs, tenrecs and most of its chameleons; the coco de mer palm and black parrot of the Seychelles; Mauritius's pink pigeon and kestrel; São Tomé's endemic birds and begonias; Saint Helena's ebony and wirebird.

Isolation also made them fragile. The dodo of Mauritius was extinct within a century of settlement; Madagascar's elephant birds and giant lemurs disappeared within the last two thousand years; giant tortoises were eaten out across most of the Indian Ocean. Rats, cats, goats and deforestation did the rest.

Since the 1970s these islands have become laboratories for conservation: rat-free islets as arks in the Seychelles and Mauritius, community-run forests in Madagascar, and marine parks from Mohéli to Príncipe. Park fees and eco-lodges are part of how that work is paid for.

Madagascar was the great exception to the empty islands. Austronesian sailors from south-east Asia, probably from southern Borneo, reached it in the first millennium AD, and Bantu-speaking Africans joined them; the Malagasy language still belongs to the Austronesian family. The Comoros were settled from the Swahili coast, and Arab and Persian traders tied both into the monsoon trade network of the western Indian Ocean.

Everything else was found empty by Portuguese navigators in the 15th and 16th centuries. Cape Verde (from about 1460) and São Tomé (about 1470) became early Atlantic slave-trade and plantation colonies. Saint Helena, found in 1502, became a watering stop on the route round the Cape and later Napoleon's prison.

In the Indian Ocean, the Dutch tried Mauritius and gave up; the French settled Réunion from 1663, Mauritius from 1715 and Seychelles from 1770; Britain took Mauritius and Seychelles in 1810–14. Each colony imported its people: enslaved Africans and Malagasy first, then, after abolition, indentured labourers from India, China and Africa.

Out of plantation societies came Creole languages and cultures. Mauritian, Seychellois and Réunionese Creoles grew from French; Cape Verdean Kriolu and the Forro of São Tomé grew from Portuguese. They are full languages with their own literature and songs, and today they are the first language of most islanders.

Music carries the history of slavery: sega in Mauritius and Seychelles, maloya in Réunion, moutya in the Seychelles, morna and funaná in Cape Verde, all now recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage. Cesária Évora made morna famous worldwide.

Faith is layered: Hindu temples, mosques, Catholic churches and Chinese pagodas share villages in Mauritius and Réunion; the Comoros are almost wholly Muslim; Madagascar blends Christianity with ancestor veneration; Cape Verde and São Tomé are Catholic.

The islands range from some of Africa's richest countries per head to some of its poorest. Seychelles and Mauritius built tourism, finance and fishing into upper-middle and high incomes; Réunion is part of France and the EU; Cape Verde, with no natural resources and frequent droughts, turned remittances and tourism into steady growth and stable democracy.

Madagascar and Comoros remain poor and politically fragile: Madagascar went through a youth-led uprising and a military-led transition in 2025, and Comoros has a long record of coups and disputed elections. São Tomé and Príncipe is a small democracy living from cocoa, aid and hopes of offshore oil.

Sovereignty questions remain. Comoros claims French Mayotte; Mauritius and the UK signed a treaty in 2025 on the Chagos Archipelago; Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha are British Overseas Territories. Climate change — stronger cyclones, coral bleaching and rising seas — threatens all of them.