Chinese noodles
Most foreign labour in Tanganyika's history as a German colony came from other parts of Africa; however, there were a few Chinese as well. In 1891, the German East Africa Company hired 491 Chinese and Javanese labourers from Singapore to work on plantations in Usambara. Separately, a community of overseas Chinese began to form on the island of Zanzibar, by then a British possession, in the 1930s. The Chinese noodles they produced there became a popular staple food for the local population, especially for the evening "iftar" meal which marks the end of the day's fasting during Ramadan.