Bawe Island is a small island in the Zanzibar Archipelago, in Tanzania. It is located about 10 km (6.2 mi) offshore Stone Town, the capital of Zanzibar on the island of Unguja.
At the end of the 18th century, sultan Barghash ibn Sa’id of Zanzibar gave the island to the Eastern Telegraph Company, which used it as an operating station for the underwater telegraph cable connecting Zanzibar to Seychelles and Aden.
This agreement was extended by sultan Khalifa ibn Sa’id in 1889, in favor of Cable & Wireless, which also built houses on the island to accommodate their personnel. Nowadays, Bawe is solely a tourist destination.