France is to hold a day of national mourning after Cyclone Chido devastated its Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte earlier this month. French President Emmanuel Macron called for the nationwide remembrance during his visit to the island last week - where he was jeered by some islanders who criticised the slow delivery of aid.

When Cyclone Chido ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure, it also exposed deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population. Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago — France's poorest

The devastation from Cyclone Chido that shattered corrugated metal shacks and thousands of lives on the island of Mayotte was both immediate and long coming. Residents of Mayotte, one of 12 tiny overseas territories remaining from one of the great global empires,