Botswana’s fortunes have also been greatly helped by the presence of diamonds, which accounts for 75 percent of the country’s foreign-exchange earnings. A joint venture signed in 1969 between the government and South Africa’s De Beers mining conglomerate has generated billions of dollars over the last four decades and allowed Botswana to offer its citizens free education and health care. But as Lekoa pointed out, “diamonds are not forever.” “We are a mono-economy, dependent on the diamond trade, and that particular sector is capital-intensive. It generates less than 10 percent of the country’s employment,” he explained. To that end, the ambassador says he’d like to see Botswana diversify its economy into glass manufacturing, textiles and financial services. More than 2,000 miles east of Botswana is Mauritius, another African country that has embarked on ambitious economic, social and political reforms since winning its independence from Great Britain in 1968 — only two years after Botswana did so. The country’s ambassador in Washington, Kailash Ruhee, says his country — 30 miles long by 24 miles wide — has been described as “a piece of rock floating in the Indian Ocean.” Nevertheless, that “rock” has made impressive strides that nations 100 times its size haven’t been able to do. “We are a classic example of a country that has moved from being a cauldron of poverty and despair to a cradle of hope and prosperity. I think this sums up the socio-economic development of Mauritius,” said Ruhee, admitting that along the way “it has been a constant battle against the tyranny of geography and history.” “At independence, we were a textbook example of an agricultural mono-crop — 96 percent of our earnings came from the production and export of sugar. Our per-capita income was only $175,” the ambassador recalled. “I was personally a beneficiary of food aid donated so generously by the people of the United States.” As was typical of Third World countries, at the time Mauritius “had low life expectancy, high illiteracy and a demographic explosion, with our annual birth rate exceeding 3 percent. We had quite a lot of ethnic tensions, and we were highly vulnerable to external shocks and the vagaries of Mother Nature,” Ruhee said. Today, however, Mauritius enjoys per-capita income of nearly $7,000. The country has been helped tremendously by preferential market access to Europe and the United States for apparel and other products, through such programs as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), passed by Congress in 2000. “We’re considered an upper-income developing country, with a human development index approaching those of the developed world,” Ruhee said. “We have gradually instilled in the population an entrepreneurial culture. We have slowly gotten rid of the culture of entitlement. We have made the population realize that there’s no such thing as a nanny state that will take care of them from cradle to grave.” That message seems to have sunk in. Colorfully described by Leslie Alexander, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritius, as “a mouse on steroids,” the island currently enjoys economic growth of 6 percent a year. Among its most important industries are seafood and aquaculture, medical tourism, professional services and logistics. “Mauritius is now heading toward an increasingly knowledge-based economy,” Ruhee said. “We want to make Mauritius a world-class business destination, open up the economy to foreign expertise and ideas, and strengthen macroeconomic fundamentals.” To that end, the country has instituted a 15 percent uniform corporate and personal tax rate, making Mauritius one of the most pro-business tax jurisdictions in the world. Unlike much of post-colonial Africa, which looked to socialist countries like Cuba for guidance, Mauritius has used Singapore, New Zealand, Ireland and the Nordic countries as institutional models. “It all boils down to the quality of political lea-dership. Both Botswana and Mauritius have been blessed in the sense that all the political leaders we’ve had have been visionary and forward-looking in their approach,” Ruhee said, describing his country as a “vibrant and robust multiparty democracy,” with free and fair elections. “We have a totally independent electoral commission, and freedom of speech and religion are deeply entrenched in our constitution,” the ambassador explained. “We have a religious adherence to the rule of law, and when Mauritius became a republic in 1992, we took the wise decision of maintaining the Privy Council of the U.K. as the ultimate court of appeals. Property rights and contracts are stringently respected, and for an investor considering Mauritius, this is an important factor when making investment decisions.” Ruhee said the experience of his country over the last 40 years proves that creating a business-friendly environment along with a “compassionate” private sector can be a powerful instrument in making a dent on poverty. “Mauritius faces a lot of challenges, and the transition to global competitiveness is turning out to be quite difficult and painful,” he said. “But we will never allow the positive indicators we get from international bodies to blind us to the fact that success poorly managed breeds complacency.” Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

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