A company owned by the ruler of Dubai plans to invest -million in Mauritius’s financial, real estate and tourism sectors ”over the coming years”, officials in the Indian Ocean nation said on Tuesday. The announcement was made by the Mauritian Board of Investment on its website.
The Indian Ocean island of Madagascar has reduced the destruction of its protected forests eight-fold as it tries to preserve its unique wildlife and earn more from tourists, conservation officials say. The world’s fourth largest island aims to keep six million hectares, or about 10% of its surface area, as nature reserves.
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/ 23 October 2007
Mauritius wants to turn its economy into a regional information and communications technology (ICT) hub in the next few years, according to an official national strategic plan. Targets in the 2007 to 2011 plan include ”a 7% contribution into Mauritius gross domestic product from offshore ICT export services”.
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/ 28 November 2006
Fifteen years after they first came to Mauritius, ”guest workers” from China, India and Bangladesh still face resistance to their efforts to improve the difficult conditions under which they live and work under. About 30 000 foreign workers, more than half of them women, are working in Mauritius.
Gay and lesbian people on the conservative Indian Ocean island of Mauritius said on Tuesday they want protection against discrimination built into new human rights legislation. Although Mauritian law does not explicitly outlaw homosexuality, gay people here complain of rampant social discrimination.
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/ 20 February 2006
Mauritius may be one of the world’s most glamorous destinations, but agriculturally speaking, there’s not that much of it to go around. As a result, the island’s government and farmers have begun looking west — to the far larger, neighbouring island of Madagascar. For the Malagasy administration, this holds out the promise of increased investment.
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/ 23 December 2005
A Dutch-Mauritian research team has discovered remains of the extinct dodo bird on the Indian ocean island, dating back about 2 000 to 3 000 years. The fossil material was excavated in an area of Mauritius called Mare aux Songes, a low-lying swamp area in the dry south-eastern part of the island.
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/ 6 September 2005
With the complete fleet of 12 racing and cruising yachts now all assembled in the Le Caudan Waterfront at Port Louis in Mauritius, crews are busy completing preparations for the 1 600-nautical-mile race between the Indian Ocean island and Durban that starts on Saturday from Grand Baie in the north of the island.
The new Prime Minister of Mauritius, former opposition leader Navin Ramgoolam, on Tuesday urged islanders not to fear change after his victory in weekend polls, saying bolstering the country’s ailing sugar and textile industries will be his top priorities. ”The population has voted for change,” Ramgoolam said in a nationally televised address.
Mauritian Prime Minister Paul Berenger on Monday conceded his ruling coalition’s defeat in weekend parliamentary elections, telling the Indian Ocean island that the opposition ”would form the next government”. He said his coalition had lost in Sunday’s polls to the Social Alliance, headed by ex-premier Navin Ramgoolam.
Early parliamentary election results in Mauritius on Monday showed the opposition ahead in areas that were considered strongholds of the ruling alliance, private and state-owned radio stations said. The polls capped a campaign in which the governing coalition and the main opposition alliance ran a close race.
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/ 19 January 2005
Less than a month after the abolition of global textile quotas, the once-booming clothing industry in Mauritius is already feeling the pinch. Textile firms that relocated to Mauritius in the 1970s, sparking a local boom and becoming a backbone of the economy, are leaving the Indian Ocean island in droves for Asian nations like China, say business leaders.
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/ 27 October 2004
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai arrived in Mauritius on Tuesday and met Prime Minister and Southern African Development Community chairperson Paul Berenger, officials said. Tsvangirai, who heads Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), travelled to the Indian Ocean island from South Africa where on Monday he met President Thabo Mbeki.
Thirteen Southern African leaders have approved a new regional charter on free and fair elections that specifies how they should be conducted to guarantee democracy, officials said on Tuesday. At a summit on the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, all the heads of state and government gave their blessing to the charter.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=120510">SADC has ‘failed democracy'</a>
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/ 15 January 2003
Trade ministers from across Africa and a large delegation led by their counterparts from the United States are meeting in Mauritius this week to discuss a law key to trade and development relations between the world’s richest country and its poorest continent.