Mauritians have every reason to be proud of their achievements in the first 40 years of independence, says Navinchandra Ramgoolam, the country’s prime minister.

Speaking to the Financial Times on the eve of the island’s independence anniversary, Mr Ramgoolam recalls how, in the 1960s, Mauritius had been written off as a “doomed island” by James Meade, the British economist and Nobel prize-winner, while an American expert had predicted a future of “famines, epidemics and martial law”.