Mauritius' AI Research Output Climbs 24% Since 2020

Mauritius published 36 AI-related research papers in 2024, making up 8.1% of the country's total scientific output for the year — part of a steady climb that has seen AI research activity grow by roughly 24% since 2020.

Where the Research Is Coming From

The University of Mauritius remains the central node in this growth, both as a research base and as a talent pipeline feeding the country's expanding tech sector. Its involvement extends beyond pure academia too — it co-ran the AI Sprint that fed into NPCC's national AI StartUps Initiative earlier this year, turning research-adjacent thinking directly into startup prototypes.

Funding the Pipeline

The Mauritius Research and Innovation Council (MRIC) provides much of the funding infrastructure behind this growth, while incubators translate research into ventures. La Plage Factory's 2026 cohort, for instance, is currently supporting 17 MRIC-approved projects.

None of these numbers are dramatic in isolation, but taken together they describe a research base that is still small in absolute terms — yet growing consistently, and increasingly tied to programmes designed to move findings out of papers and into products.