Ebène Cybercity and Mauritius's ICT-BPO Growth Strategy

In 2003, Mauritius's state-owned Business Parks of Mauritius Ltd began developing Ebène Cybercity, a purpose-built commercial district roughly 10km south of Port Louis, as the physical anchor for a national strategy to diversify the economy beyond sugar and textiles into information and communication technology and business-process outsourcing (ICT-BPO). The first office building opened in 2004.

The strategy aimed to diversify Mauritius's economy into ICT-BPO by combining tax and infrastructure incentives with a purpose-built commercial district.

Business Parks of Mauritius Ltd (BPML) / Landscope Mauritius developed the district's office infrastructure, while the Economic Development Board (EDB Mauritius) now runs dedicated investor-facilitation services for ICT-BPO companies, building on Cybercity's original tax and infrastructure incentives.

Two decades on, Ebène has grown to more than 60 buildings offering over 500,000 square metres of office space and a daily working population above 40,000, and the district is estimated to generate around half of the country's data-centre revenue. The wider ICT-BPO sector it anchors has close to 1,000 companies employing more than 33,000 people, contributing roughly 5.6% of GDP in 2024 (down from a reported 7.4% in 2021, reflecting both sector shifts and changes in how contribution is measured).

This evidence is drawn from official economic statistics tracking a maturing sector over two decades rather than from a controlled evaluation of the park itself, so it demonstrates durable sector growth and scale rather than proof that the park caused the outcomes attributed to it. The employment generated is concentrated in professional, English/French-bilingual roles, and the model has been most successful where — as in Mauritius — it combined tax incentives with genuine language/skills advantages and political stability.