The Cyber Island Of Mauritius

Culture

from the yet-another-e-city dept

It’s popular these days for various countries to build some office space and a convention center with some high speed internet connections and dub themselves a “cyber city” or an “internet city”. Many of these have some initial success stories, but don’t go on to accomplish very much. The island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean is hoping to be different with their Cyber City. While initially, it sounds similar to other efforts, they also realize that just dumping in infrastructure won’t be enough. So, the island whose main industries have been sugar trade and textiles, is working on educating their population in the ways of computers. They even have a converted coach bus filled with computers that is making its way around the island teaching everyone the basics of computing. Who knows if this one will work out. There are so many other such cities that don’t seem to live up to the hype that came with them. However, it is good to see this attempt at least take into account the education necessary for local citizens to benefit from such a place.