Cyber City Mauritius

When the cyber city project started in 2001, the government was aiming at making ICT the 5th pillar of the economy (main pillars being sugar, tourism, manufacturing and financial services). It is located at Ebene, some 15 minutes away from the capital of Port Louis. The city spans over an area of 152 acres and looks like a modern one with picturesque buildings, patches of green, a hypermarket with food court and shops. There has also been the development of a cyber village nearby which consists of comfortable flats most of which have been bought by companies in the cyber city for overseas business people. Mauritius offers ideal conditions for business in the form of political, social and economic stability; the workforce on the island is also skilled (in terms of tertiary education) and can speak and write both French and English rather fluently. The tele communication facilities in the city include the SAFE (South Africa Far East submarine optic fibre cable; cable that transfers high speed data from area to area) that links the island on one end to South Africa and on the other hand to Malaysia, Europe and western Africa. The city is dominated by the 12 storey gray stone building called the Ebene Cyber Tower One. Many Indian companies such as Infosys, Pentasoft are found in the building as well as call centres and programming centres. Many other businesses such as banks (Barclays, HSBC) are opening new branches in there. The companies are offered low tax initiatives as well as duty free imports of raw materials. Workers from India have been encouraged to come to Mauritius and share their knowledge in the IT sector and train Mauritians for the advance of their businesses. The BPML (Business Parks of Mauritius Ltd) is a government based company that oversees the renting and allocation of business spaces at the cyber city and promotes the outsourcing of IT in Mauritius throughout the world. One of the main reasons to establish such a place was the idea for Mauritius to act as disaster recovery centre for businesses around the world, that is, the island would have a system of data recovery in case some misfortune should befall these companies. The relative isolation in the middle of the Indian Ocean and its stability makes it a very good choice for storing important data. The project was started with the help of India with which Mauritius has very close links. Many of the construction workers are of Indian and Chinese origins. Though major construction works are still in progress, the once covered sugarcane land shows that Mauritius is taking large leaps in the communication field especially in the African region.