CHENNAI: Calling Africa the world’s next major growth frontier, Hambyrajen Narsinghen, Junior Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade of Mauritius, on Saturday invited Indian, particularly Tamil Nadu, businesses to use Mauritius as a base to access the vast African market, warning that China has already moved faster to seize opportunities on the continent.
Delivering the keynote address at the Chennai Economic Summit 2.0 on Anna Salai, Narsinghen said Africa, with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, offered opportunities far beyond its traditional image.
“The future market is Africa. You have to look at the big Africa and prepare for it,” he said. “Mauritius is a politically stable and investor-friendly jurisdiction, which is ranked number one in Africa for ease of doing business, with company incorporation possible within hours. Mauritius allows you to de-risk Africa.”
Highlighting deep people-to-people ties with India, he said nearly 65% of Mauritius’s 1.5 million population was of Indian origin, including a significant Tamil diaspora. “We may have lost ground in language, but we remain deeply rooted in Indian culture. We’re proud of our Indian origin,” he added.
Narsinghen pointed to Mauritius’s legal and financial architecture, combining French civil law and English common law, as offering strong legal certainty, arbitration mechanisms and free repatriation of capital. The country has investment protection treaties with 23 African nations and double taxation avoidance agreements with India and several others.
In the context of ongoing global tariff wars, he outlined trade structuring advantages. “If you export directly to Africa, taxes are higher. If you manufacture or semi-process in India, complete processing in Mauritius and then export to Africa, margins improve,” he said, and cited opportunities in special sugar, rum, logistics and free-port manufacturing.
The minister opined that Africa was a virgin market for services such as IT and artificial intelligence, areas where Tamil Nadu and southern India had a competitive edge. “Use Mauritius as the platform to catch the African market,” he said. “Mauritius is positioning itself as an education, medical and blue economy hub, with Indian hospitals and service providers expanding their footprint. This is about making business work, for growth, jobs and poverty reduction.”