In the village of Chuini on Zanzibar's west coast, a group of 40 local women run a cooking school that does more than teach you how to fry onions for pilau. Mamas of Zanzibar was founded by Maskat, a 38-year-old mother of three who started the project after her own divorce, when she realised her neighbours — many of them single mums, divorcees or survivors of domestic violence — had almost no way to earn a stable income.
The four-and-a-half-hour Signature Cooking Experience starts at the local market, where the Mamas show you how to pick a good coconut (shake it and listen for the milk-to-flesh ratio), choose creamy avocados, and sort spinach varieties from sweet potato leaves. Back in the kitchen — a breeze block and concrete building Maskat built with her own savings — you roll chapati dough, slow-cook plantains in coconut milk, marinate tasi (rabbitfish) in onion and spices, and tackle the mbuzi, a wooden stool with a serrated blade used to scrape out coconut flesh. Meals come with East African snacks like kachori, ubuyu (spiced baobab seeds) and cardamom doughnuts, plus spiced tea, and end with everyone eating together on floor mats while the women sing in kanga robes.
Why it matters: Zanzibar's unemployment sits near 30 per cent for women, and while the divorce rate has climbed to around 31 per cent — with women initiating up to 80 per cent of Islamic court cases — few tourism experiences actually connect visitors with local women. The Mamas' model does exactly that, and it's expanding: a second kitchen is being built with Matemwe Attitude, a new solar-powered eco-resort on the island's north-east coast that runs a food-forest grounds design and an ocean discovery centre.
Getting there is about to get easier too. British Airways launches flights to Zanzibar in May 2027, and Tui starts direct services from Gatwick in November 2027. If you want your Zanzibar beach week to put money into local hands, this is a very good place to start.
