Since the 1990s, the growing literature on the world of the Indian Ocean has shifted the gaze away from an Africa shaped by its connections with the Atlantic or Mediterranean worlds. It is time to write the history of 'Global Africa', of Africa in the world, by looking east and south, by connecting and comparing the magnitude of diasporic movements in the Indian Ocean with the Black Atlantic (Gilroy, 1998), the emergence of a black counternarrative of modernity with African-Asian connections in ideas and cultural expressions. The history of Global Africa, past and present, will be written by tracing the multiple and complex itineraries and routes taken by Africans across water towards islands and continents. It will expand the cartography of the continent to its 'margins', the numerous islands (the Comoros archipelago, Madagascar, Maldives, the Mascarene Islands, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Zanzibar) that have played an important role in making the Indian Ocean a diasporic field. The study of African diasporic formations in the Indian Oceanic world involves examining the ways in which navigation techniques, wars, the creation of trade routes, changes in Europe and Asia and imperialism have affected circulation and exchanges, and also how the Cold War and current geopolitical tensions, economic competition and new technologies have interacted to create new regions and subregions. To study the Indian Ocean as a diasporic field in the light of postcolonial, subaltern, feminist, cultural, decolonial and global studies means imagining a methodology that not only questions postcolonial national narratives and writes history from below, but also brings together threads as diverse as environmental history, maritime history and the question of representation (films, museography, literature, theatre and music).