Open Letter to Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry

March 28, 2025

Dear Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry Secretary General, President, and Vice President:

Greetings from ASARPI: Advanced Study of African Renaissance Policies Ideas (asarpi.org). I hope all of you are well.

My name is Professor John Huston Stanfield II. I am an American expatriate with many years in African affairs who came to Mauritius in July 2019 as the 2019-2020 University of Mauritius SSR Chair of African Studies, in joint venture with ASARPI, to raise the profile of UoM as an African university. ASARPI and UoM remain valued partners as to my utter surprise, I now have my Mauritius ten years retirement visa and have even been offered a twenty years permanent resident visa.

My unexpected settling down here is not just because of the lovely weather and great cuisine but because I have found unprecedented respect here as a foreign think tanker concerned with vital public goods in sustainable nation building in Mauritius and in other African countries, and more importantly, as an American of enslaved African and indigenous ancestry. Not that I have yet to experience discrimination and prejudice here.After all, I do have Creole brown skin physical attributes. But the respect and regard I have experienced here immeasurably outweighs the distasteful racial microaggressions which on occasion come my way.

I have been so busy here with building ASARPI into an international force and doing informal studies and making general rounds here, I am just getting around to joining Mauritius professional associations such as MCCI. I joined MCCI late last year. I have quickly become impressed by the broad array of opportunities for membership relationship building and growth domestically and internationally, especially related to continental Africa. I was flattered to get a phone call from the MCCI office asking if I planned to be at the Annual meeting on March 27, which I was delighted to attend. Yesterday of course.

The Annual Meeting surpassed my expectations as one who has been an observer and researcher here during the past going on six years, with ongoing informal conversations with citizens and immigrants of many walks of life and of diverse demographic backgrounds. It was good to hear the tough transparent realism of both MCCI leaders and key economic and international affairs Ministers with refreshing, well overdue, pledges to work in unison in vital business areas (though the needed issue of increasing exporting capacity must be balanced with providing incentives for exporters to contribute to local citizen consumers well being).

Though I did wonder why the two Education Ministers were not in the mix since synchronization of higher and TVET education, the private sector including entrepreneurship and government, is desperately needed here. In a small nation like Mauritius, more such inter-sphere planning, implementation, and monitoring/evaluation is imperative. This is especially the case since a key elephant in the room, thus not even mentioned in minute passing, is something which makes economic growth aspirations more or less inoperational.

Namely the brain drain problem which is increasing not only due to Mauritius citizens and immigrants seeking better opportunities elsewhere but being unable to find economic opportunities due to deep insidious prejudices in private and public sectors such as age, ancestry, caste,disabilities, lack of family status, religious commonality, and dark skin color.

How can private and public sector institutions collaborate in incentivizing talented citizens and immigrants, no matter their demographics, to stay or go and come back to contribute to their prosperity and that of the nation? The brain drain may be serving as a key cause for government liberalization of immigration policies, to support education institutional leaders hungry for international student generating revenue, and worker scarcity desperate labor market employers but it is having dismal consequences since these matters are not being well thought out and managed well by government and business associations, thus falling prey to corrupt exploitation practices hurting the nation’s reputation and victimizing immigrants.

This has especially been the dismal case when it comes to recruiters tapping into the wealth of African parents wanting their children to come to be educated in alleged safe Mauritius, and finding their dear ones are not getting into promised programs, being overcharged, and being exposed to unsafe living conditions since they can’t afford to live in campus student housing. Or African parents find they have wasted their hard earned wealth on useless credentials their children come to earn.

The illegal labor practices of employers working African and other immigration students much more than the legally permitted 20 hours is a horrible problem in need of enforcement.

A societal source of the lack of ethical management and enforcement of immigrant education and employment in Mauritius, and the too free reign of unethical education and employment recruiters which is bound to be explosive one of these days, is the widespread low, if any, cultural literacy of too many Mauritius education administrators, employers, business associations, and government officials when it comes to Africans. All too many just want money and gaze at Africa as a monolithic growing cash cow. Too many here running higher education and TVET institutions and businesses have never been to continental Africa and even look down on Africans or certain African nationalities, though don’t mind taking their money, and can be careless about their welfare here.

And speaking of African immigrants, how can MCCI policy advocate for more to become SME recipients since so many have the talent to contribute to Mauritius economically? This will certainly assist in the economic future of the nation in the midst of the brain drain as would be providing SME development incentives for differently abled people and older persons.

Lest I forget, when is the MCCI finally going to soberly and authentically address the tabooed publicly unspoken Pandora Box of the mosaic racism in Mauritius so dauntingly synchronized with ageism, ancestry, caste, classism, disabilities, sexism, and skin color all so intricately intertwined here in religious communalism, embedded in a lingering long obsolete racialized divided plantation economy in mindset and structured inequalities; in localized segregated ecosystems; and in the old saying here, Mauritians enjoy growing two things: pineapples and prejudices?

Unfortunately, there is little chance, beyond delusional fantasies, that Mauritius can reach significant heights of growth and global eminence l hear propheticized so often here without soberly addressing insidious and explicit racism and it’s numerous demographic synchronizations. As said, with overwhelming empirical evidence that can be presented to prove it, Mauritius is a highly structured discriminatory society with a dwindling population. It will not become the hoped for prospering democracy without authentically using globally well-tested best policy practices to eliminate, in this case, more than obvious and less than obvious, racialized economic and social inequalities and their underlying mundane and explicit prejudicial attitudes and behaviors.

All the exciting big MCCI and government business plans of reaching out to Africa with its well educated and affluent emerging generational leaders will not pan out well unless leaders in Mauritius government, business, and civil society address the dirty secret of racism at home which those abroad so clearly see in Mauritian demographic exclusive public relations and tourism materials and delegations sent abroad.They see racism when they come here and walk the streets and look out their tour bus windows and taik with resort staff more than you realize.

Those in so many cases returning home to Mauritius with dark skins after many years can’t wait to depart again to where they came from, never to try coming back home again. Why?

People with significant means, including Africans, see and know more about Mauritius more than what you think which means they come to enjoy the lovely beaches here, lest harassed by rude racist airport police officers while trying to come in, but go elsewhere to invest their skills and money.

My ending question point is how much is MCCI going to partner with government ministries not only to fight drug addiction destroying so many youth here but also address the fragrant ageism problem in Mauritius? Ageism is the world’s most widespread source of prejudice and inequality. Unlike most other African countries, Mauritius is disproportionately older rather than younger. There is a need for incentives to allow able older persons to continue to work whether they have a pension or not; as well as insurance policies which better insure healthy and unwell older people; and private and public policies which forbid older age credit discrimination and ageism in other areas of Mauritius life such as housing and gym access.

Should MCCI prioritize these issues in partnership with the government and other civil society institutions such as all levels of education, media, the various faith communities, and age related serving non-profit organizations just as much as the points raised in the impressive Annual Meeting presentations (which by the way ASARPI would not mind publishing as a business, transitional government snapshot)?

As l indicated in the aftermath of the recent transition to a new national administration, nonaligned ASARPI is here as a hybrid, mostly virtual Pan-African and growing Pan-Asian policy advocacy global think tank headquartered in Mauritius. We assist civil society organizations (e.g., MCCI) and local communities through offering venues for policy options discussions and lining up best practicing experts relevant for sustainable developmental empowerment in Mauritius, like elsewhere, and to advocate for the inter-national administrations continuation of vital public goods and to encourage new ones (https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2024/11/28/its-different-this-time-the-third-earth-shattering-election-in-mauritius/).

So thanks for being so inviting. It encouraged me to stay up some wee hours to write this reflection stemming from attending the 2025 MCCI Annual Meeting!

In turn, in the spirit of wishing the best for this marvelous idyllic land with so much potential in being, in this deeply troubled multi-polarized world, an authentic multicultural global democracy model in which all, not just some, are truly equal through the leadership of business in unity with government and civil society, we of ASARPI wish to extend a vital noteworthy invitation to MCCI, along with the diverse other business associations in Mauritius. Namely, we invite MCCI and other Mauritius business associations to join us in our monthly February 2025-December 2026 National Conversations for needful transparent challenging civil discussions about how all citizens and immigrants in Mauritius can become empowered for the good of all (https://drive.google.com/file/d/14_ogI1lLMPcraIkdmDZJLMZKN_RmPGZj/view?usp=drivesdk).

Best Wishes. For Justice and Peace for All of us, l am with,

Kindest Regards,

Prof John

Professor John Huston Stanfield II

ASARPI

Quatre Bornes, Mauritius

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About ASARPI

ASARPI: Advanced Study of African Renaissance Policies Ideas is the consolidation and beyond of Professor John H. Stanfield II’s 35 years of think tank networks and institutions-based work in Africa and in African Diasporas before he moved to the continent full time in 2014.

ASARPI (asarpi.org)is a hybrid, mostly virtual, nonaligned Pan-African and growing Pan-Asian policy advocacy think tank globally headquartered in Mauritius with branches in Namibia and South Africa. We do much of our work through Study-Practice Groups which convene engagement processes involving multiple stakeholder representatives ranging from impacted grassroots communities to the highest private and public sector policy decision makers to develop strategies and models for governments, civil societies, and grassroots communities to address public good and quality of life challenges.

ASARPI is being positioned in the rapidly changing Africa, as a think tank venue encouraging new national administrations to continue vital public goods established by their predecessors as well as to establish new vital ones.