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Rebalancing Research on World Cities: Mauritius as a Gateway to Sub-Saharan Africa

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Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This chapter seeks to rebalance research on world cities, which suffers from a bias towards the Global North in theory building. For this purpose, the author advances the concept of ‘gateway cities’. In contrast to the world city approach, the gateway one addresses the global and regional interlinking of cities along five dimensions: transport and logistics, industrial processing, corporate control, service provision and knowledge generation. It allows us to incorporate what can be learnt from cases in the Global South into our understanding of cities in economic processes—or, more narrowly, global value chains. The author applies the gateway concept to Mauritius, showing that the island state serves as a gateway to sub-Saharan Africa in the oil and gas sector, in particular for logistics, corporate control and service provision.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The oil and gas industry is usually divided into three sectors: down-, mid- and upstream. The upstream sector includes searching for oil and gas fields, drilling wells and also operating these wells. The midstream sector involves the transportation, storage and wholesale marketing of crude and purified/refined products. The downstream sector comprises refining crude oil and purifying raw natural gas, as well as the marketing and distribution of consumer products.

  2. 2.

    Interview with an engineering and construction company, Port Louis, 21 September 2017.

  3. 3.

    A full list, including detailed information on these double-taxation-avoidance agreements, is available online at: www.mra.mu/index.php/taxes-duties/double-taxation-agreements. For a complete list of the investment protection and promotion agreements meanwhile, see: www.investmauritius.com/downloads/ippa.aspx.

  4. 4.

    LPG is a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases used as fuel in cooking equipment, heating appliances and for vehicles. It is increasingly being applied as an aerosol propellant and a refrigerant in an effort to reduce damage to the ozone layer too.

  5. 5.

    Interview with the MPA, Port Louis, 11 September 2017.

  6. 6.

    Interview with a major downstream company, Port Louis, 28 September 2017.

  7. 7.

    Interview with the STC, Ebène, 13 September 2017.

  8. 8.

    Interviews with an engineering and construction company, Moka and Port Louis, 14 and 21 September 2017, and with an engineering company, Vacoas-Phoenix, 26 September 2017.

  9. 9.

    Interview with an engineering and construction company, Port Louis, 21 September 2017.

  10. 10.

    Interview with an engineering company, Vacoas-Phoenix, 26 September 2017.

  11. 11.

    Interview with an independent consultant, Ebène, 19 September 2017.

  12. 12.

    Interview with an upstream service provider, Grand Baie, 18 September 2017. A withholding tax is a requirement that the payer for an item of income deducts tax from the payment and pays that sum to the state instead. Many states use withholding taxes as a means of combatting tax evasion. They require that payers of dividends, interest and royalties to non-resident payees withhold from such payments an amount set at a specific rate.

  13. 13.

    Interview with an international consultancy, Ebène, 19 September 2017.

  14. 14.

    Interview with an international consultancy, Ebène, 12 September 2017.

  15. 15.

    Interview with an international consultancy, Ebène, 12 September 2017.

  16. 16.

    Interview with a professor at the University of Mauritius, Martindale, 14 September 2017.

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Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Ivan Turok for various helpful suggestions on the first draft of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography, University of Hanover, Hanover, Germany

    Sören Scholvin

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  1. Sören Scholvin
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Correspondence to Sören Scholvin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography, University of Hanover, Hanover, Germany

    Sören Scholvin

  2. School of Economics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Anthony Black

  3. Institute of Geography, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Javier Revilla Diez

  4. Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa

    Ivan Turok

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Scholvin, S. (2019). Rebalancing Research on World Cities: Mauritius as a Gateway to Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Scholvin, S., Black, A., Revilla Diez, J., Turok, I. (eds) Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06206-4_13

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