Jayesh desai biography

Migration from South Asia to East Africa

Jayaben Desai was born in April 1933 in Gujarat, a province in India. Upon her marriage to Tanzania-based Suryakant Desai, she migrated to Tanzania.

There she joined a prolific community of British subjects of Indian origin, who had long been settled in the East African countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

South Asians historically migrated to East Africa for a number of reasons.

There was some pre-colonial mercantile travel from South Asia to East Africa.

Jayesh desai biography

Traders and adventurers from South Asia travelled to East Africa before British intervention and some of these people stayed, whilst some went back and forth. British colonisation brought a more sustained, larger, community of Asians to East Africa.

Recruited by the British from Northwest India, indentured labourers were brought to East Africa to build the region's railways (1890s-1900). A small minority of these l