Cyber Paradise

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 visits by the cybercaravan to their small town have taught them how to use a mouse and a keyboard and how to navigate Windows. Now it's time to learn about the Web. It takes about half an hour before 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' ambitious plans to turn itself into a hub for information and communications technology. The Indian Ocean island boasts one of Africa's most successful economies. Under French and then British control, nearly all available land was given over to growing sugarcane. But after independence in 1968, the government pinned development on diversification, luring Asian textile manufacturers with cheap labor and tax-free exporting zones. In the 1980s the country also invested in tourism and offshore banking. Economic growth has exceeded 5% a year over the past two decades, and per capita income is now more than $3,500, one of the highest in Africa. But rapid population growth and competition from other textile-producing countries have hurt. "We have to create new opportunities," says Kemraz Mohee, head of the National Computer Board. "Our kids' expectations are higher."

As Mauritius markets itself as a "cyber island" to serve the African and South Asian markets, its timing is lousy. It missed the dotcom boom and must compete against more established hubs in Singapore and Malaysia. But opportunities remain. Because both London and Paris ruled the island, many Mauritians speak English and French, making the island an attractive bilingual base for American companies doing business in Africa and Asia. IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have opened regional offices there, and last month work began on a $50 million "cyber city" to attract new software and IT companies. The government promises low taxes, 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 laws to protect and regulate the sector. And a recently completed undersea fiber-optic cable from Portugal along the west coast of Africa to India and Malaysia via Mauritius will increase the country's bandwidth by a factor of 4,000. Says Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth: "Our physical isolation will no longer hold us back."

But Mauritius needs skilled workers. The country has fewer than 3,000 trained IT professionals (out of a population of 1.2million) and produces just 500 more each year. The government is investing heavily in education, wants to put computers into every school on the island and recently opened a university of technology to churn out IT workers. "But the lack of education isstill amassive problem," says Eric Charoux, director of DCDM Business School, Mauritius' largest private university. "There are just not enough students coming through." This dot in the ocean, he says,would welcome techies who lost their jobs in the U.S. dotcom bust and would like tostart over in anisland paradise.