Mauritius

Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean about 1,100 nautical miles off the southeastern coast of Africa, east of Madagascar, made up of the main island along with Rodrigues, Agalega and St Brandon, with Port Louis as its capital and largest city. Possibly first sighted by Arab sailors around 975, the island was visited by the Portuguese in 1507, settled by the Dutch from 1598 under the name Mauritius, renamed Isle de France when French colonization began in 1715, and ceded to the United Kingdom in 1810 under the Treaty of Paris; it became the British Empire's main sugar-producing colony before independence in 1968 and became a republic in 1992, while retaining the UK's Privy Council as its highest court of appeal. In 1965 Britain split the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius to form the British Indian Ocean Territory, forcibly expelling the local population and leasing Diego Garcia to the United States, a dispute the International Court of Justice resolved in Mauritius's favor, leading to a 2025 bilateral agreement recognizing its sovereignty over the islands. Its population is ethnically diverse, with Indo-Mauritians the largest group alongside Creole, Sino-Mauritian and Franco-Mauritian minorities, and Mauritius is the only African country where Hinduism is the most practiced religion; its Westminster-modeled government is ranked by the Economist Democracy Index as Africa's only full democracy. The country ranks 73rd on the Human Development Index, is classified by the World Bank as a high-income economy, and provides free universal health care, education through the tertiary level, and free public transportation for students, senior citizens and the disabled.