Zanzibar launches center to preserve information on slave trade

Tanzania's semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago on Wednesday launched the East African Slave Trade Center, which is aimed at boosting tourism in the Indian Ocean Island.

Minister of the State in Second Vice-President Office, Mohamed Aboud was optimistic that the move is part of Isles' government initiative to lure more tourists.

The official said that the new center will also serve as an important area for researchers and historians from across the globe, who might want to understand how slave trade was conducted in east Africa, before being abolished in 1873.

"We're very optimistic that the new center will make Zanzibar easily seen in the world map, due to its historic background. Key historical information collected by historians will be stored at the center," Aboud said.

Zanzibar was one of the largest slave ports in the vast Indian Ocean slave trade, which was dominated by Arab slave traders.

Apart from establishing the center, the minister said that his government will continue remembering the contribution made by Dr David Livingstone, a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa, one of the most popular national heroes of late 19th century in Victorian Britain.

Head of Zanzibar Cultural Heritage Center, Nuhu Saranya said the idea behind establishing the center came after realizing tourism potentials in the clove-rich island.

Saranya said the center have five photos' exhibition rooms and history of abolition of slave trade in east Africa and neo-slave trade which is ongoing across the world.

"One of the rooms will be for story telling on slave trade for Tanzanian mainland and Zanzibar as well as special room for research," Saranya said.

The project is being funded by the European Union (EU), U.S. and Zanzibar government.

The Arab slave trade originated before Islam and lasted more than a millennium. The slavers hacked their way from Bagamoyo on the Tanzania mainland coast into the African interior, as far west as the Congo.

The slavers traded, bribed chiefs, pillaged and frequently kidnapped to meet the high demand for slaves. The newly acquired slaves were often forced to carry ivory and other goods back to Bagamoyo. The name Bagamoyo is derived from the Kiswahili words "bwaga moyo" which meanS "lay down your heart", because it was here that slaves would abandon any remaining hope of freedom or escape. Slaves who survived the long and perilous hike from the interior were then crammed into wooden boats called dhows bound for the slave markets in Stone Town, Zanzibar. Endit