Island in the Stream

On any other Tuesday morning the women of the Grand Gaube sewing club would be swapping knitting patterns or recipes. But today the dozen Mauritian homemakers have piled into a bus fitted out with nine networked desktop computers for an introductory visit to cyberspace. Earlier tours of the cybercaravan to their small town have taught them how to use a mouse and a keyboard and navigate Windows. Now it’s time to learn about the Web. Within half an hour the women are surfing sites showcasing the latest fashion designs from overseas. “We’re surprised how quickly people learn,” says Ahsan Ashraf, a research officer with the National Computer Board, the government agency that runs the mobile education program. “Some people have never seen a computer before. But they seem very enthusiastic to see what is happening elsewhere.”

The hour-long training course is a small but important part of Mauritius’ plans to turn itself into a hub for information and communications technology. The Indian Ocean island has long boasted one of Africa’s most successful economies. Under French and then British control, nearly all available land was given over to growing sugar. But after independence in 1968 the government pinned development on diversification, luring Asian textile manufacturers with cheap labor and low-tax exporting zones. In the 1980s the country also invested in tourism and offshore banking and services. Economic growth has exceeded 5% a year over the past two decades, and per capita income is now more than $3,500, the highest in Africa. But rapid population growth and competition from other textile-producing countries have begun to hurt. “We have to create new opportunities,” says Kemraz Mohee, head of the National Computer Board. “Our kids’ expectations are higher.”

With tourism growth limited by space — Mauritius measures just 60 km by 40 km — and concerns about the environment, the government has hit upon the idea of investing in technology and marketing itself as a “cyber island” to serve the African and south Asian markets. Its timing bad — the dotcom crash hurts, and it will have to compete against more established IT hubs like Singapore and Malaysia. Still, work began this month on a business park for software and IT companies. Future tenants at the $50 million Cyber City of Ebene include the Ministry of Information Technology, Microsoft and Indian software and Internet giant Satyam. The government promises low tax rates for IT companies, duty-free imports of IT equipment and automatic residency for anyone who invests more than $500,000 in the industry. It is also passing a raft of new laws to protect and regulate the sector. A recently completed undersea fiber-optic cable that runs from Portugal, along the west coast of Africa and then on to India and Malaysia via Mauritius increases the country’s bandwidth by a factor of 4,000. Says Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth: “Our physical isolation will no longer hold us back.” Once floated by tourism, Mauritius’ economy

But a lack of skilled workers may. Mauritius has fewer than 3,000 trained IT professionals (out of a population of 1.2 million) and produces just 500 more each year. The government is investing heavily education, wants to put computers into every school and recently opened a University of Technology that will concentrate churning out IT workers. But, says Eric Charoux, director of DCDM Business School, “the lack of education is still a massive problem. There are just not enough students coming through.” Mauritius hopes to attract workers from India and South Africa but may find it tough to pay top salaries. And concentration on developing computer whizzes could hurt other sectors. “We don’t produce thousands of people who can do a tertiary degree,” says Harry Krishna Samboo, manager of State Informatics, a government-owned company set up to encourage tech growth. “With emphasis on technology, will anyone become a lawyer or a teacher or a doctor?”

Perhaps Mauritius’ best chance for success comes thanks to a quirk of history. Two-thirds of its citizens descend from indentured Indian laborers brought in by the British to work the sugar fields. Cultural and business links with India are still strong, and because both London and Paris ruled the island many Mauritians speak French and English. The government says a winning combination, and already India’s huge IT industry is eyeing Mauritius a back door into French-speaking markets in Africa and France itself. With a bit luck, a dot in the ocean could become a dotcom success story.