For centuries, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Jews, Malays and Arabs have circulated across the Indian Ocean. As migrants, traders, merchants, pirates, explorers, missionaries, pilgrims and captives, Africans contributed to the creation of diasporic contact zones. From the Horn of Africa to Indonesia and China, South-South exchanges and encounters cut across ethnic and language affiliations. Diasporic formations have also been linked with the spread of global religious networks and the role they play in transforming cultural patterns. Today, the Indian Ocean remains a space of interwoven experiences and multidimensional memories, reconfigured networks of capital and trade, and new nodes of geopolitical conflict.