The AI Strategy of Mauritius
Artificial Intelligence Strategy in the Indian Ocean
Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation. It might not be the first place you think of, yet it is one of the only countries in Africa as of January 2020 to have a strategy for artificial intelligence (AI). Since I am exploring different national strategies on AI and there are very few of those in Africa I thought Mauritius would be interesting to explore. Their strategy was released in November 2018.
Mauritius
Mauritius is ranked as the most competitive and one of the most developed economies in the African region. The country is a welfare state; the government provides free universal health care, free education up to tertiary level and free public transport for students, senior citizens, and the disabled. It is a rather small place.
The island’s government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, and Mauritius is highly ranked for democracy and for economic and political freedom. Mauritius is categorised as “high” in the Human Development Index. According to the World Bank, the country has an upper-middle income economy.
Mauritius Artificial Intelligence Strategy
The strategy is a report by the working group on artificial intelligence in Mauritius. The working group consisted of senior ministers and advisors. The working group focused on:
- The potential applications of AI, in particular by matching the existing and new AI solutions to specific sectors and areas which could be of benefit to the economy.
- The unique selling point of Mauritius in terms of AI.
- Potential impact of AI.
- The appropriate ecosystem to nurture AI in Mauritius with focus on building collaborative communities.
- Labour requirements, skills and technical expertise to sustain the ecosystem.
- The regulatory framework to enable the development of AI as well as possible incentives, fiscal or otherwise.
The strategy begins with a summary of current affairs mentioning the history of artificial intelligence and some quotes (such as that of Vladimir Putin).
- The manufacturing sector which is one of the main pillars of our economy has seen its contribution to GDP dropped from 18% to 13 % in 10 years. The manufacturing industry has recently witnessed a surge in the application of AI and developers have come up with solutions that bring down costs, reduce defects and increase production speed. The proposed AI Council will look at the ways and means how the manufacturing sector can embrace AI to give the sector a new boost.
- The Healthcare sector in Mauritius is metamorphosing itself into an integrated cluster underpinned by a core group of high value activities such as high-tech medicine and medical tourism.
- Mauritius has already engaged in the Fintech revolution. Many companies in ICT/BPO and Banks are already engaged in several activities at different degrees of maturity such as in mobile applications, E-banking, digitization of platforms and business intelligence. All of these activities can further be fuelled with AI applications.
- Recent developments by the Google Research team have demonstrated potential significant savings in energy through the use of AI in energy management and distribution. This is a low hanging fruit project that could benefit the country of tremendous savings in fossil fuel import and contributing to the reduction of our CO2 footprint.
Setting up an AI Council
For Artificial Intelligence to have the required impact described above, there is a need to set up the Mauritius Artificial Intelligence Council (MAIC) made up of say 10 main members which will facilitate and oversee project implementation as well as quantifying the socio-economic impact. The Council was set to study and recommend a proper structure for operation.
Sub-committees
It will also set-up sub-committees to enlist the required expertise for the implementation of the various projects. It will define a roadmap along the line described in the WG Report.
They outline the progress to the fourth industrial revolution. After this they provide outlines of a few of the other national strategies. They mention cybersecurity and ethical considerations whereafter they mention different strategies to attract or develop AI talent.
Mauritius has strong fiscal incentives. A company set up on or after 1 July 2017 and involved in innovation-driven activities for intellectual property assets which are developed in Mauritius can benefit from an exemption of 8 income years as from the income year in which the company started its innovation-driven activities. The Government also allows double deduction of qualifying expenditure incurred for R&D purposes. “Qualifying expenditure” includes, inter alia, staff costs, consumable items, computer software directly used in research and development and subcontracted research and development.
There is a National SME Incubator Scheme (NSIS). The main aim of the NSIS is to encourage the creation of Innovative businesses for the socioeconomic benefit of the Republic of Mauritius through a nurturing and training process in a conducive environment provided by Accredited Incubators driven by the private sector. The Accredited Incubators which will select, coach and mentor innovative business start-ups as early as the idea stage. The NSIS will fund (on a 50:50 matching grant basis) Accredited Private Sector Incubators at different incubation phases through accredited incubators funded by the NSIS. These phases are as follows: Pre — Incubation phase, Incubation Phase and Acceleration Phase.
They outline the challenges for Mauritius.
- Falling productivity
- Moderate growth
- Technology, adoption and innovation IP
- Declining ageing population
- Social Issues
The main focus areas of the strategies include:
(i) Prioritization of sectors and identification of national projects
(ii) Skills attraction and capacity building
(iii) Incentives to catalyse implementation
(iv) Ethical considerations of AI
(v) Development of strategic alliances in emerging technologies
(vi) Sensitization campaigns
(vii) Adoption of new technologies for improved public services delivery
Healthcare features in the report and FinTech is a large section looking at how it can help Mauritius to be responsible.
Ocean economy
Boasting a 2.3 million km2 Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Mauritius’ Ocean Economy represents over 10.3 % of the national GDP of Mauritius. The Government ambitions to double the contribution of the Ocean Economy to GDP in the medium term. Under the background of global ocean development, artificial intelligence has increasing importance which urges the improvement of traditional research and exploration methods which are key enablers to unlock the full potential of the Ocean Economy.
- Maritime internet of things
- Unlocking the blue biotechnology
- Smart Port Concept
- Maritime Efficiency
- Wisdom Navigation
- Deep sea exploration
- Digital Ocean Towards Intelligence
Transport
The transport problem in Mauritius has grown into a serious one as more and more people resort to the use of a personal means of transport. Over the past thirty years, the number of vehicles on our roads has increased by almost 400%, making Mauritius one of the densest countries in terms of traffic management. Statistics reveal that for a population of 1.2 million, the traffic ratio reaches nearly 500,000 vehicles.
The implementation of AI in the public transport domain will assist transport technology in predicting future demands on transportation and learning to provide better, more efficient solutions. These predictions could also quickly adapt to disturbances such as traffic incidents and public emergencies, increasing the safety of cities and infrastructure.
After which they list a series of case studies.
AI and its impacts on BPO sectors
They mention With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Business Process Outsourcing companies must evolve to a new level.
- Employment
- Cost of implementation
- Unsatisfied customers
- Salary cost
- Reduced workload
- Errorless functioning
The State
They mention too the benefit of AI in the state and different areas that should be navigated.
- Resource Allocation-Administrative support is needed to speed up task completion and inquiry response times are long due to insufficient support.
- Large Datasets-Dataset is too large for employees to work with efficiently Internal and external datasets can be combined to enhance outputs and insights. Data is highly structured with years of history .
- Procedural-Task is repetitive in nature and inputs/outputs have binary answer.
- Diverse Data- Data includes visual/spatial and auditory/linguistic information. Qualitative and quantitative data needs to be summarised regularly.
This is #500daysofAI and you are reading article 251. I am writing one new article about or related to artificial intelligence every day for 500 days. My current focus for 100 days 200–300 is national and international strategies for artificial intelligence.
