PORT LOUIS: Mauritius symbolises the challenge globalisation poses across Africa: succumb to the whims of a world trade system dictated in faraway capitals or transform crisis into opportunity.

The Indian Ocean island’s 1.2 million people face a double economic blow this year as the loss of favourable market arrangements dating back decades menace the sugar and textile industries that have underpinned prosperity.

Business leaders say the country’s only chance of long-term growth is to embrace a global trend towards liberalisation by throwing open the doors to investors in new sectors like information technology and communications.

“Mauritius is at a cross-roads,” said Tim Taylor, chief executive of Rogers & Co. Ltd, a leisure-to-logistics conglomerate. “We’re coming from where we had special deals to a much more open playing field.”

The economic challenge has coloured the political landscape ahead of elections on July 3, with bookmakers offering odds narrowly favouring the opposition Social Alliance over Prime Minister Paul Berenger’s ruling coalition.

The Alliance, led by former Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, pledges to break the economic grip of French settler dynasties and compensate descendants of slaves who worked their sugar plantations in centuries past.

“The glass ceiling has to be broken,” said Alliance shadow finance minister Rama Sithanen. “We have to make sure there’s a new class of entrepreneurs so that not only is the economy prospering, you also have social and political stability.”

Mauritius has escaped the communal violence plaguing parts of Africa, but Berenger’s status as the first white prime minister since independence has crystallised the ethnic Indian majority’s resentment of Franco-Mauritian economic dominance.

“Every election they start talking about ethnic groups,” said a dealer on the Port Louis foreign exchange market. “It’s more pronounced because Berenger is at the head.”

While its island status and relatively high income set it apart from most of its African mainland neighbours, Mauritius has faced the challenge shared by many former colonies in ending dependence on a single cash crop — in its case sugar.

Mauritius has had more success than, say, West African cotton growers like Mali or Benin in diversifying into new industries, but changes in trade rules threaten to undermine the “Mauritian Miracle” of sustained economic growth.

—Reuters