Karimjee Jivanjee & Co in Tanzania, 1860–2000: A case for ‘diasporic family firms’

This study is about the Karimjee Jivanjee family in Tanzania, whose history we are able to trace back more than 150 years. The Karimjees originally came from Mandvi, a small seaport in Kutch, Northwest India. They are Shia Muslims, more specifically Bohras. They were petty traders with probably some background in agriculture. During the famines and economic hard times in North West India in the early nineteenth century, they were forced to look for new ways to find living. One option was to sail to Zanzibar. The founding father of the Karimjee Jivanjee family, Jivanjee Buddhaboy, arrived in Zanzibar in 1818. At that time the South Asian community in Zanzibar probably amounted to less than 1,000 people – mainly young men – on the island.