Mauritius’ Ebène Cybercity was built 15 years ago to create a modern working environment for Mauritians and bring a hi-tech hub to this island nation and hosts almost 25,000 mostly educated, middle-class workers work at Ebene during the week reports The Guardian.
Ebene Cybercity is built on sugar cane fields roughly 15km from the capital, Port Louis. It can be criticized for lack cohesiveness, poor public transport, limited parking or even difficult access by foot, poor drainage that haunts people during the rainy season, among others.
Despite its many design flaws, the 64-hectare Cybercity boasts of high-speed internet (which just a half a decade ago was a rarity in the country), backup electricity generators to bridge frequent power cuts, and networking systems to guarantee that big businesses can stay online constantly. Despite the island’s geographic distance from mainland Africa, the hub is so well connected that it hosts the African Network Information Center, the internet registry platform for the entire continent.
“It’s actually a whole ecosystem of facilities: intelligent buildings, air conditioning and electric backup,” Koomaren Chetty, CEO of Business Parks of Mauritius (BPML), the company founded by the government to create and run Cybercity said to the Guardian.
The Cybercity started with the construction of a 12- storey Cyber Tower 1 which was engineered and built by Indian companies, financed by a loan guaranteed by the Indian government. The blue glass and grey stone building has been awarded the “Intelligent Building of the Year” by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), USA in 2005. A second building was commissioned a few years later and was designed by local architects and construction companies.
Currently, several buildings are under construction in the Cyber city. However, there are vacant parcels of land at the centre of the city. Cybercity and the government’s involvement is coming under scrutiny as the new administration has announced the creation of several new smart city projects around the island including the construction of Heritage estimated at USD 820 million set to begin in August 2016.
