The most recent official census by the Comoran government, conducted
in 1991, put the islands' population, exclusive of Mahor�, at 446,817.
Official counts put the population of Mahor� at 67,167 in 1985 and
94,410 in 1991--a 40 percent increase in just six years.
Average population density in Comoros was 183 persons per square
kilometer in 1980. This figure concealed a great disparity between the
republic's most crowded island, Nzwani, which had a density of 470
persons per square kilometer in 1991; Njazidja, which had a density of
250 persons per square kilometer in 1991; and Mwali, where the 1991
population density figure was 120 persons per square kilometer. Overall
population density increased to about 285 persons per square kilometer
by 1994. Mahor�'s population density went from 179 persons per square
kilometer in 1985 to 251 per square kilometer in 1991.
By comparison, estimates of the population density per square
kilometer of the Indian Ocean's other island microstates ranged from 241
(Seychelles) to 690 (Maldives) in 1993. Given the rugged terrain of
Njazidja and Nzwani, and the dedication of extensive tracts to
agriculture on all three islands, population pressures on Comoros are
becoming increasingly critical. A similar situation obtains on Mahor�.
The age structure of the population of Comoros is similar to that of
many developing countries, in that the republic has a very large
proportion of young people. In 1989, 46.4 percent of the population was
under fifteen years of age, an above-average proportion even for
sub-Saharan Africa. The population's rate of growth was a relatively
high 3.5 percent per annum in the mid1980s , up substantially from 2.0
percent in the mid-1970s and 2.1 percent in the mid-1960s.
In 1983 the Abdallah regime borrowed US$2.85 million from the IDA to
devise a national family planning program. However, Islamic reservations
about contraception made forthright advocacy and implementation of birth
control programs politically hazardous, and consequently little was done
in the way of public policy.
The Comoran population has become increasingly urbanized in recent
years. In 1991 the percentage of Comorans residing in cities and towns
of more than 5,000 persons was about 30 percent, up from 25 percent in
1985 and 23 percent in 1980. Comoros' largest cities were the capital,
Moroni, with about 30,000 people, and the port city of Mutsamudu, on the
island of Nzwani, with about 20,000 people. Mahor�'s capital, Dzaoudzi,
had a population of 5,865 according to the 1985 census; the island's
largest town, Mamoudzou, had 12,026 people.
Migration among the various islands is relatively small. Natives of
Njazidja often settle in less crowded Mwali, and before independence
people from Nzwani commonly moved to Mahor�. In 1977 Mahor� expelled
peasants from Njazidja and Nzwani who had recently settled in large
numbers on the island. Some were allowed to reenter starting in 1981 but
solely as migrant labor.
The number of Comorans living abroad has been estimated at between
80,000 and 100,000; most of them lived in Tanzania, Madagascar, and
other parts of East Africa. The number of Comorans residing in
Madagascar was drastically reduced after anti-Comoran rioting in
December 1976 in Mahajanga, in which at least 1,400 Comorans were
killed. As many as 17,000 Comorans left Madagascar to seek refuge in
their native land in 1977 alone. About 40,000 Comorans live in France;
many of them had gone there for a university education and never
returned. Small numbers of Indians, Malagasy, South Africans, and
Europeans live on the islands and play an important role in the economy.
The Comoran people are a blend of African, Arab, and MalayoIndonesian
elements. A few small communities, primarily in Mahor�, speak kibushi,
a Malagasy dialect. The principal Comoran Swahili dialect, written in
Arabic script, is related to the Swahili spoken in East Africa but is
not easily intelligible to East African Swahili speakers. Classical
Arabic is significant for religious reasons, and French remains the
principal language with which the Republic of the Comoros communicates
with the rest of the world.
A number of ethnically distinguishable groups are found: the Arabs,
descendants of Shirazi settlers, who arrived in significant numbers in
the fifteenth century; the Cafres, an African group that settled on the
islands before the coming of the Shirazi; a second African group, the
Makoa, descendants of slaves brought by the Arabs from the East African
coast; and three groups of Malayo-Indonesian peoples--the Oimatsaha, the
Antalotes, and the Sakalava, the latter having settled largely on Mahor�.
Intermarriage has tended to blur the distinctions among these groups,
however. Creoles, descendants of French settlers who intermarried with
the indigenous peoples, form a tiny but politically influential group on
Mahor�, numbering no more than about 100 on that island. They are
predominantly Roman Catholic and mainly cultivate small plantations. In
addition, a small group of people descended in part from the Portuguese
sailors who landed on the Comoro Islands at the beginning of the
sixteenth century are reportedly living around the town of Tsangadjou on
the east coast of Njazidja.
Shirazi Arab royal clans dominated the islands socially, culturally,
and politically from the fifteenth century until the French occupation.
Eleven such clans lived on Njazidja, where their power was strongest,
and their leaders, the sultans or sharifs, who claimed to be descendants
of the Prophet Muhammad, were in a continual state of war until the
French occupation. Two similar clans were located on Nzwani, and these
clans maintained vassals on Mahor� and Mwali after the Sakalava wiped
out the local nobles in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries . Although the clan system was weakened by the economic and
social dislocations of the colonial era, the descendants of clan nobles
continue to form a major portion of the educated and propertied classes.
The pre-independence rivalry of Said Mohamed Cheikh and Prince Said
Ibrahim, leaders, respectively, of the conservative Parti Vert and the
Parti Blanc, was interpreted by some as a revival of old clan
antagonisms. Yet many descendants of nobles live in poverty and
apparently have less influence socially and politically on Nzwani than
on Njazidja.
The present-day elite, although composed in part of those of noble
ancestry who took advantage of the opportunities of the cash crop
economy established by the French, is mainly defined in terms of wealth
rather than caste or descent. This focus on wealth is not unusual,
considering that the original Shirazi settlers themselves were traders
and that the precolonial sultans were actively involved in commerce.
Conspicuous consumption continues to mark the lifestyle of the elite.
Especially well regarded are those individuals who hold the grand
mariage, often after a lifetime of scrimping and saving. This
wedding ceremony, which can cost as much as the equivalent of US$20,000
to US$30,000, involves an exchange of expensive gifts between the
couple's families and feasts for an entire village. Although the gift
giving and dancing that accompany the grand mariage have helped
perpetuate indigenous arts in silversmithing, goldsmithing, folk song,
and folk dance, the waste involved has disastrous consequences for an
economy already short on domestic resources. A ban or curb on the grand
mariage was on the agenda of many reformers in the period preceding
the radical regime of Ali Soilih, who himself had taken the almost
unheard-of step of declining to participate in the ritual. However, the
efforts of the Soilih government to restrict the custom aroused great
resentment, and it was restored to its preeminent place in Comoran
society almost immediately after Soilih was deposed in 1978. Although
its expense limits the number of families that can provide their sons
and daughters a grand mariage, the ritual is still used as a
means of distinguishing Comoran society's future leaders. Only by
participating in the ceremony is a Comoran man entitled to participate
in his village's assembly of notables and to wear the mharuma,
a sash that entitles him to enter the mosque by a special door. Few, if
any, candidates win election to the National Assembly without a grand
mariage in their pasts. For these reasons in particular, critics of
traditional Comoran society condemn the grand mariage as a
means of excluding people of modest resources from participating in the
islands' political life.
Those who can afford the pilgrimage to Mecca are also accorded
prestige. The imams who lead prayers in mosques form a distinct elite
group.
Despite the weakening of the position of the Shirazi elite, one
observer reports that in many subtle ways old distinctions persist. The
descendants of slaves, formally emancipated in 1904, are mostly
sharecroppers or squatters, working the land that belonged to their
ancestors' former owners, although some have gone abroad as migrant
laborers (a greatly restricted option since Madagascar's expulsion of
thousands of Comorans in the late 1970s). Men of "freeborn"
families choose "freeborn" wives, holding, if possible, a grand
mariage; but if they take second wives, these women often are of
slave ancestry.
Comoros - Status of Women
Among men who can afford it, the preferred form of marriage appears
to be polygyny with matrilocal residence. Although possible, the first
marriage is formally initiated with the grand mariage when
possible, subsequent unions involve much simpler ceremonies. The result
is that a man will establish two or even more households and will
alternate residence between them, a reflection, most likely, of the
trading origins of the Shirazi elite who maintained wives at different
trading posts. Said Mohamed Djohar, elected president in 1990, had two
wives, one in Njazidja and the other in Nzwani, an arrangement said to
have broadened his appeal to voters. For men, divorce is easy, although
by custom a divorced wife retains the family home.
Islamic law recognizes only male ownership and inheritance of land.
In Comoros, however, certain landholdings called magnahouli are
controlled by women and inherited through the female line, apparently in
observance of a surviving matriarchal African tradition.
Despite their lower economic status, women married to farmers or
laborers often move about more freely than their counterparts among the
social elite, managing market stands or working in the fields. On Mwali,
where traditional Islamic values are less dominant, women generally are
not as strictly secluded. Women constituted 40.4 percent of the work
force in 1990, a figure slightly above average for sub-Saharan Africa.
Girls are somewhat less likely than boys to attend school in Comoros.
The World Bank estimated in 1993 that 67 percent of girls were enrolled
in primary schools, whereas 82 percent of boys were enrolled. In
secondary school, 15 percent of eligible Comoran girls were in
attendance, in comparison with about 19 percent of eligible boys.
Although the 1992 constitution recognizes their right to suffrage, as
did the 1978 constitution, women otherwise play a limited role in
politics in Comoros. By contrast, in Mahor� female merchants sparked
the movement for continued association with France, and later, for
continued separation from the Republic of the Comoros.
Comoros accepted international aid for family planning in 1983, but
it was considered politically inexpedient to put any plans into effect.
According to a 1993 estimate, there were 6.8 births per woman in
Comoros. By contrast, the figure was 6.4 births per woman for the rest
of sub-Saharan Africa.
In one of Comoran society's first acknowledgments of women as a
discrete interest group, the Abdallah government organized a seminar,
"Women, Family, and Development," in 1986. Despite
participants' hopes that programs for family planning and female
literacy would be announced, conference organizers stressed the role of
women in agriculture and family life. Women fared slightly better under
the Djohar regime. In February 1990, while still interim president,
Djohar created a cabinet-level Ministry of Social and Women's Affairs,
and appointed a woman, Ahlonkoba Aithnard, to head it. She lasted until
a few weeks after Djohar's election to the presidency in March, when her
ministry was reorganized out of existence, along with several others.
Another female official, Situ Mohamed, was named to head the second-tier
Ministry of Population and Women's Affairs, in August 1991. She lost her
position--and the subministry was eliminated--hardly a week later, in
one of President Djohar's routine ministerial reshufflings. Djohar made
another nod to women in February 1992, when he invited representatives
of an interest group, the Women's Federation, to take part in
discussions on what would become the constitution of 1992. Women only
apparently organized and participated in a large demonstration critical
of French support of the Djohar regime in October 1992, following
government suppression of a coup attempt.
Comoros - Religion and Education
Islam and its institutions help to integrate Comoran society and
provide an identification with a world beyond the islands' shores. As
Sunni Muslims, the people follow religious observances conscientiously
and strictly adhere to religious orthodoxy. During the period of
colonization, the French did not attempt to supplant Islamic customs and
practices and were careful to respect the precedents of Islamic law as
interpreted by the Shafii school (one of the four major legal schools in
Sunni Islam, named after Muhammad ibn Idris ash Shafii, it stresses
reasoning by analogy). Hundreds of mosques dot the islands.
Practically all children attend Quranic school for two or three
years, starting around age five; there they learn the rudiments of the
Islamic faith and some classical Arabic. When rural children attend
these schools, they sometimes move away from home and help the teacher
work his land.
France established a system of primary and secondary schools based on
the French model, which remains largely in place. Comoran law requires
all children to complete eight years of schooling between the ages of
seven and fifteen. The system provides six years of primary education
for students ages six to twelve, followed by seven years of secondary
school. In recent years, enrollment has expanded greatly, particularly
at the primary level. About 20,750 pupils, or roughly 75 percent of
primary-school-age children were enrolled in 1993, up from about 46
percent in the late 1970s. About 17 percent of the secondaryschool -age
population was enrolled, up from an estimated 7 percent fifteen to
twenty years earlier. Teacher-student ratios also improved, from 47:1 to
36:1 in the primary schools and from 26:1 to 25:1 in secondary schools.
The increased attendance was all the more significant given the
population's high percentage of school-age children. Improvement in
educational facilities was funded in 1993 by loans from the Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the African Development
Bank. Despite the spread of education, adult literacy in 1993 has been
estimated at no better than 50 percent.
Comoros has no university but post-secondary education, which in 1993
involved 400 students, is available in the form of teacher training,
agricultural education training, health sciences, and business. Those
desiring higher education must study abroad; a "brain drain"
has resulted because few university graduates are willing to return to
the islands. Teacher training and other specialized courses are
available at the M'Vouni School for Higher Education, in operation since
1981 at a site near Moroni. Few Comoran teachers study overseas, but the
republic often cannot give its teachers all the training they need. Some
international aid has been provided, however, to further teacher
training in the islands themselves. For example, in 1987 the IDA
extended credits worth US$7.9 million to train 3,000 primary and 350
secondary school teachers. In 1986 the government began opening
technology training centers offering a three-year diploma program at the
upper secondary level. The Ministry of National Education and
Professional Training is responsible for education policy.
As elsewhere in Comoran society, political instability has taken a
toll on the education system. Routinely announced reductions in force
among the civil service, often made in response to international
pressure for fiscal reform, sometimes result in teacher strikes. When
civil service cutbacks result in canceled classes or examinations,
students have at times taken to the streets in protest. Students have
also protested, even violently, against government underfunding or
general mismanagement of the schools--the World Bank stated in 1994 that
the quality of education resulted in high rates of repetition and
dropouts such that the average student needed fourteen years to complete
the six-year primary cycle.
Comoros - Public Health
After independence in 1975, the French withdrew their medical teams,
leaving the three islands' already rudimentary health care system in a
state of severe crisis. French assistance was eventually resumed, and
other nations also contributed medical assistance to the young republic.
Despite improvements in life expectancy and the infant mortality rate,
Comoros in 1993 continued to face public health problems characteristic
of developing countries.
Life expectancy at birth was estimated at fifty-six years in 1990, up
from fifty-one years in 1980. The crude birthrate was forty-eight per
1,000 and the crude death rate, twelve per 1,000 according to 1989
statistics. All three of these figures were close to the averages for
sub-Saharan Africa. The rate of infant mortality per 1,000 live births
was eighty-nine in 1991, down from 113 in 1980. The 1990 average rate
for sub-Saharan Africa was 107.
Malaria was ubiquitous in the islands, with 80 to 90 percent of the
population said to be affected by the disease. Other prevalent maladies
included tuberculosis, leprosy, and parasitic diseases. In 1989 about
half of all children one year old or younger had been immunized against
tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, and measles, a
proportion roughly comparable to the rate of immunization among other
states in subSaharan Africa. Per capita daily caloric intake in 1988 was
2,046, about average for sub-Saharan Africa but only a little better
than 90 percent of daily requirements. Children were most often the
victims of malnutrition. Their generally poor diets were deficient in
protein in part because local custom discouraged the feeding of fish to
children. The scarcity of safe drinking water--available to about one in
three Comorans--made intestinal parasites a problem and compounded
malnutrition, with children again being the main victims.
The World Bank estimated that in 1993 Comoros had one physician per
6,582 Comorans, a marked improvement over the ratio of one to 13,810
reported in 1983. Comparable data for subSaharan Africa as a whole were
not available; however, it appeared that Comorans enjoyed a more
favorable ratio than many of their neighbors in East Africa and the
Indian Ocean.
Despite improvements in life expectancy, infant mortality, and the
number of physicians, the overall quality of care remained poor. About
80 percent of the population lives within one hour's walk of a health
facility, usually headed by a trained nurse, but paramedical staff are
in short supply and many health facilities are in poor condition. Some
international medical aid has been provided, mostly by France and the
World Health Organization (WHO).
Although Comoros lacks homegrown narcotics, the islands are used as a
transit site for drugs coming mainly from Madagascar. In view of
international concern about drug trafficking, in 1993 France began
providing technical expertise in this field to Comoros. In addition, the
World Bank in a 1994 report pointed out the "high prevalence of
sexually transmitted diseases and the low use of condoms" as a
significant health threat with regard to the spread of acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which already affected the islands. However,
in the period prior to 1990 and extending through 1992, the WHO reported
that Comoros had a very low incidence of AIDS--a total of three cases
with no case reported in 1992, or an overall case rate of 0.1 per
100,000 population.
Comoros - Media
As recently as the early 1980s Comoros had no national media.
State-run Radio Comoros, transmitting from Njazidja, was not strong
enough to send clear signals to the republic's other two islands. In
1984 France agreed to provide Radio Comoros with funding for an FM
(frequency modulation) transmitter strong enough to broadcast to all
three islands, and in 1985 made a commitment to fund a national
newspaper after a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) study revealed that Comoros was the only UN member
lacking print and electronic media. A state-owned newspaper, Al
Watwany, began operations in July 1985, first as a monthly and soon
afterward as a weekly. An independent weekly, L'Archipel, began
publishing in 1988. A news agency, Agence Comores Presse, is now based
in Moroni, and France has provided funds for establishing a national
television service. In 1989 Comoros had an estimated 61,000 radios and
200 television sets.
In addition to national broadcasts on FM in Comoran Swahili and
French, Radio Comoros in 1993 broadcast internationally on the shortwave
band in Swahili, Arabic, and French. An independent commercial FM radio
station, Radio Tropique FM, began broadcasting in 1991, although it and
its director, political activist Ali Bakar Cassim, have both been the
object of government ire over the station's readiness to criticize the
Djohar regime.
During the independent media's brief career, its representatives
occasionally have been rounded up along with other critics of the
government during the republic's recurrent bouts of political crisis.
However, outlets such as Radio Tropique FM and L'Archipel,
which is noted for its satirical column, "Winking Eye,"
continue to provide independent political commentary.
