Word: mauritius
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...Mauritius is the development darling of Africa. The IMF predicts its real GDP will grow 4.1% this year. Known for high-end tourism, Mauritius is making its mark as a hub of global business, with taxes at a uniform 15% for individuals and businesses, and regulations so streamlined it takes three days to set up a company and $200 a year in fees to run it. Woo's business, the Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile, founded in 1986, is part of that boom. Its Port Louis factory is so big that workers use roller skates to get around...
...says "going global" is imperative if the business is to survive. That attitude, coupled with Mauritius' low taxes and ease of doing business, has made the country home to a rocketing finance industry as well. By April 2007, Mauritius was hosting 31,815 foreign companies, including 487 investment funds with a total net asset value of $36.92 billion. Some of that wealth is offshore, but the industry's lawyers, banks and investment houses employ Mauritians and do business with them...
...Mauritius' secret? Good governance: the state, run by centrist parties that have peacefully swapped power since independence in 1968, ensures that growth lifts everyone. Mauritius is the only African nation to have eradicated malaria or provided free education and health care, and HIV/AIDS infects just 435 people a year. There have been no coups (Mauritius has no army), and its ethnicities--Indian, African, Chinese, European--are a model of integration...
...Mauritius is good Africa, Angola is not. An élite cadre of government figures, Angolan bosses and foreign oil companies holds on to the soar-away gains of its 35% growth while the country stagnates in destitution and inflation. Partly that's due to the lack of a diversified economy to harness the oil wealth. As a foreign diplomat puts it, "If you're dying of thirst, you can't drink from a fire hose. The water comes out too fast." But it's also due to corruption: a 2004 Human Rights Watch report claimed that $4.22 billion...
...since 1992. The observer describes the state as a ship heading for the reef of authoritarianism, corruption and popular discontent--a pattern seen in other oil-rich nations like Nigeria. Africa's oil wealth is all the more important now that China is investing huge sums of money. In Mauritius, the Chinese government is building a $500 million business park. Angola, China's leading supplier of oil, has received at least $5 billion in loans and credit...