The Digo (Wadigo in Swahili) are a Bantu ethnic and linguistic group based near the Indian Ocean coast between Mombasa in southern Kenya and northern Tanga in Tanzania.

The Digo have resided in the Kenyan coast's plains and hinterland ridges south of Mombasa and in Tanzania north of Tanga since the fifteenth and sixteenth century.

Due to Zanzibar's rising economic stature and the Digo people's tight ties to Swahili towns in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was possible for individuals to amass riches and power, frequently through affiliations.

The Digo had previously dominated trade between the shore and the interior, but they eventually lost it to the Swahili and Arabs who were part of the expanding Zanzibari Sultanate.

[4] Due to constant famines caused by the British occupation, the practice of enslaving nieces or nephews by the Digo in exchange for food or payment was abolished at the start of World War One.

The colonial government forbade the enslavement of minors throughout the first decade of the 20th century in an effort to dismantle debt networks and end slavery.

The colonial government implemented taxation and land access restrictions in order to produce a labor force that would be required to work for pay.

[4] Due to the Kenyan Digo's proximity to the Tanzanian border, the British put more pressure on them to provide labor for the war against the Germans.

This put into question men's duties and rights towards their sisters and offspring, which posed problems for Digo kinship systems as a whole.

As a result, the colonial attempt to regulate access to land as well as other components of Digo culture, such as individual power, upset ideas about kinship, law, and identity with ramifications for gender.

The fuko plays a crucial part in defining people's identities and providing the idiom by which membership in Digo society is claimed or demonstrated.

Digo people believe that paternal lineage links are important, despite the fact that maternal clan relationships are the most significant kinship ties.

[6] In the nineteenth century, children of both sexes typically did not inherit from their father but instead from their mother, grandmother, maternal uncles (mjomba), or their fuko.

By using both categories in land disputes, this false division between "native" and "Muslim" offered a forum for dialogue and the challenge of colonial authority.

Digo Mijikenda converts, while, "south of Mombasa, beginning in the 1890s, remained resident in their home villages, while centering their social and religious life as Muslims in town.

Previously cordial family connections were torn apart by the rules concerning what to eat, with game and pig being the most essential options.

Due to the unequal number of conversions of men and women, the Chief Kadhi (an Islamic religious authority) decided to establish the right of inheritance for illegitimate Muslim children.

[4] Muslim marriages came to be seen as conferring the highest prestige on women while also placing the woman in a system of rights, freedoms, obligations, constraints, and reliance along the metropolitan coastal frontier.

Dress, non-agricultural work, leisure time, and financial dependence on spouses for married women were among the newly included conceptions of status.

Digo women's status is influenced by issues of class, which are reflected in ideals like having free time (rather than money in general), but specifically freedom from agricultural work.

[4] The ability to afford new less (two cloth wraps, one worn as an outer skirt and the other as a head scarf or veil) twice a month as fashion changes is crucial as well because being in style is prestigious.

Being able to perform social duties like attending weddings and funerals, regardless of the distance or amount of time required, is an important aspect of status.

[4] The majority of the kids were sold into slavery to nearby Swahili villages with nautical populations, giving them access to seafood.

The distinction between fuko and mbari kinship, which affects membership and social continuity, is significant and frequently explained in terms of land inheritance.

They continued to serve as places for final dispute resolution as well as religious and ceremonial sites, but they lost some of their importance to Digo society.

[4] One woman recalls farming in the colonial era in the Kwale district's Kinondo neighborhood as follows: The land belonged to everyone, and while there was no set pattern or method for planting trees, individuals were familiar with their particular species.

[4] A middle-aged Digo man named Kasim described how the land of his grandmother originally transferred maternally from his mother's brother to his sister's child before remaining in the control of the fuko women.

[4] The majority of scholarly research has argued that Digo inheritance is matrilineal and that historically, land only passed from the mother's brother to the sister's son.

[4] In the nineteenth century, children of both sexes typically did not inherit from their father but instead from their mother, grandmother, maternal uncles (mjomba), or their fuko.

[4] In the nineteenth century, children of both sexes typically did not inherit from their father but instead from their mother, grandmother, maternal uncles (mjomba), or their fuko.