Mauritius’s AI Ascent: A Vision for a Centre of Excellence in the Digital Age

The Future Is Now

Let us build a Mauritius where talent thrives, innovation flourishes, and ethical AI becomes our global signature

AI – Pic – LinkedIn

By Sameer Sharma

In an era marked by rapid technological advancements, small nations like Mauritius face a crucial decision: to remain passive consumers of global innovation or to emerge as agile, forward-thinking pioneers.

With artificial intelligence (AI) reshaping industries from healthcare to finance, Mauritius stands at a crossroads, offering a unique opportunity to leverage its strategic advantages — a bilingual workforce, a robust financial ecosystem, and geographic connectivity — to become a regional AI innovation hub. However, this vision relies heavily on the deliberate cultivation of home-grown talent and the creation of an ecosystem where cutting-edge solutions can thrive. For decades now, pundits have been giving high-level speeches around turning Mauritius into all kinds of hubs in vain. The last AI roadmap Mauritius published almost a decade ago had a vision but no implementation strategy. The following analysis focuses on the ‘how’.

The Imperative for Local AI Mastery

The financial sector in Mauritius, including its offshore industry, already grapples with complex challenges such as detecting sophisticated fraud, conducting accurate ‘Know Your Customer’ checks, combating money laundering, and managing credit risk. While basic tools and systems are in place, the application of machine learning, and more specifically Generative AI solutions, has yet to take hold. Relying predominantly on external solutions risks stifling local innovation and perpetuating a cycle of dependency, making it imperative to build domestic expertise to make informed “build versus buy” decisions. Mauritian fintech firms, while unlikely to lead the world in developing foundational models from scratch, have the potential to add significant value by leveraging Generative AI and traditional machine learning solutions in real-world local and regional use cases in a cost-effective and responsible manner. Thus, Mauritian machine learning engineers and application developers can design cost-effective solutions by leveraging foundational models that may need fine-tuning to suit specific tasks. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to know how to use it.

Pillars of the AI Centre of Excellence

Talent Development: From Theory to Practice

Mauritius boasts a small foundation in mathematics and statistics. However, bridging the gap between theory and application is essential. An AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) could prioritize hands-on, industry-aligned training. By partnering with global education firms, the CoE can design curricula focused on practical skills such as data engineering, model development, model deployment (MLOps/LLMOps), and cloud infrastructure management.

Mentorship Networks

The value proposition of any CoE lies in connecting students with both local and global AI professionals, ensuring knowledge transfer and real-world relevance. The CoE could also promote apprenticeships, embedding trainees within banks, healthcare providers, and logistics firms to solve operational challenges while reducing hiring risks for employers. Mentors bring the real-world experience the students need to deliver on real-world projects. Essentially, students would be given the opportunity to work on real-world projects with mentor support, allowing them to build and showcase their work portfolio. Companies get cheap labour initially to work on their pain points. Over time, companies get to work with their future employees or business partners.

Solving Local and Regional Problems

The CoE, in collaboration with or as part of the Bank of Mauritius Innovation Hub, could pilot AI solutions tailored to the financial sector’s specific challenges. Use cases include: Anti-Money Laundering (AML): Implementing models to detect suspicious transactions in real time. Credit Risk Modeling: Leveraging machine learning to evaluate diverse data sources. Regulatory Compliance: Creating transparent AI tools for evolving regulations. Customer Interaction Tools: Developing virtual assistants to enhance customer experiences. Copilot Tools: Deploying AI solutions to augment human productivity by automating routine tasks. Beyond finance, the CoE can drive innovation in tourism (personalized visitor experiences), healthcare (diagnostic support systems), and logistics (smart port management). Government services are full of repeatable tasks that are crying for automation and significant cost savings. In a nutshell, the Government itself is a massive business opportunity.

Responsible AI: Ethics as a Competitive Advantage

As AI adoption grows, associated risks such as biased algorithms and opaque decision-making increase.
The CoE can position Mauritius as a leader in ethical AI by:
– Implementing Governance Frameworks: Establishing guidelines for model explainability, fairness audits, and data privacy.
– Developing a Modern Model Risk Management Framework: Ensuring that developed solutions with embedded models are conceptually sound and fit for use.
– Open Banking as a Test bed: Encouraging innovation while enforcing strict safeguards, transforming compliance into an advantage for foreign developers.

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: Balancing Security and Scalability

Access to the right data and machine learning operations (MLOps) architecture is crucial for AI-enabled solutions. Mauritius and its CoE should partner with global cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure to provide trainees access to secure, cost-effective cloud environments. A hybrid model will allow sensitive data to remain on-premises while harnessing cloud scalability for compute-heavy tasks. This infrastructure will also serve as a sandbox for startups and foreign developers to test solutions in a regulated yet flexible environment.

Avoiding the “Vendor Trap”

A recurring theme in the CoE’s design should be self-reliance. While global tech giants offer valuable tools, the goal is to empower Mauritians to lead AI projects, not just implement off-the-shelf products. This approach not only reduces costs but also fosters intellectual property retention.

A Collaborative Roadmap

The success of the CoE hinges on collaborative efforts across various sectors. Academia can reinforce essential math and coding courses while the CoE emphasizes practical skills. The private sector can contribute by proposing challenge statements and providing datasets for trainees to work on. Government involvement is crucial as well, with policymakers expediting open banking reforms, offering tax incentives for AI research and development, and funding scholarships for underrepresented groups. Additionally, engaging the Mauritian diaspora can provide valuable mentorship and investment opportunities.

From Vision to Reality: A 24-Month Timeline

Transforming the vision into reality for Mauritius’s AI Centre of Excellence requires a well-structured, phased approach over 24 months. Initially, securing partnerships with cloud providers, designing specialized boot camps, and identifying pilot projects with firms such as banks are pivotal. Following this, it would be essential to launch the first cohorts and apprenticeships while establishing AI governance guidelines with the Bank of Mauritius and Financial Services Commission. In the final phase, scaling AI solutions across diverse industries, attracting international developers through open banking APIs, and hosting a regional AI summit will firmly position Mauritius as a leader in AI innovation.

A Small Island, A Giant Leap

Mauritius need not be a bystander in the AI revolution. By investing in its youth, fostering public-private collaboration, and prioritizing ethical innovation, the island can position itself as a beacon for sustainable technological progress. The AI Centre of Excellence is more than a training hub — it’s a statement of intent. In the words of the late founding father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, “A nation is great not by its size, but by the quality of its people.” For Mauritius, that quality lies in empowering its people to harness AI not just as end users, but as architects of the future. This is a win-win model for the country.

Mauritius attracts entrepreneurs from around the region with right-sized regulations such as open banking regulations, by selling itself as a regional laboratory while the state gets a new sector, an improved human capital base that is more entrepreneurial and that can significantly enhance overall productivity and save costs.

The time to act is now. Let us build a Mauritius where talent thrives, innovation flourishes, and ethical AI becomes our global signature.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 7 March 2025