The Prime Minister announced during his official trip a vast support plan entitled “Mayotte standing”, accompanied by two bills which are already arousing impatience and questions. The government's responses relating to security and immigration, certainly central subjects, are eagerly awaited, but they must not obscure the other major difficulties of the seahorse island: access to water, electricity, education, health, waste and land management… This “Prévert-style” list is a bit dizzying.
The editorial team advises you
More is needed to discourage the new Overseas Minister, Manuel Valls, whose visit your servant organized on site in 2015… So let's not give in to resignation and try to gain some perspective.
In reality, Mayotte faces three forms of curses of different nature and scale. The first curse lies in the standard of living of the population. If the per capita income is seven times lower than the national average, it nevertheless remains three times higher than that of the neighboring archipelago of the Comoros, from which Mayotte separated by referendum in 1974.
While the Mahorais demand rapid convergence to reach the level of social benefits in France, any catch-up at the same time strengthens the attractiveness of this French confetti located in an ocean of poverty between Madagascar and Tanzania. The 101st French department thus paradoxically suffers from being both too rich compared to its neighbors, and too poor compared to the Republican promise of real equality.
In Mayotte, the question of reconstruction now arises acutely.
AFP
The second curse lies in the importation of an unsuitable institutional model. The Mahorais voted massively in 2009 to become a department in order to make their attachment to France irreversible. We understand them, and no one can blame them. However, with departmentalization inevitably came the application of a mass of mandatory standards concerning local authorities, health, labor law and even taxation.
While the complex reality of the island called for the maintenance of strong exemptions, Mayotte found itself mired in a maquis of decrees and laws to be applied.
The third and final curse refers to the lack of heavy and structuring infrastructure. Mayotte did not benefit from the same density of investments as the mainland territory (or even Reunion) in the 1950s-1970s. Not enough roads, schools, colleges, high schools, ports, agricultural mechanization… For ten years, the extension of the airport's only runway has, for example, come back like a sea serpent without the subject being discussed. really moving forward.
So what to do? In the absence of a miracle solution, lucidity requires moving away from a model based on an exclusive bilateral relationship with France to favor better integration into the regional environment. In a note written in 2015 (and not published to date), Michel Rocard pleaded for a single authority bringing together Réunion, Mayotte and the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). The former Prime Minister's idea – very daring – consisted of betting on an economic catch-up common to the entirety of a vast area stretching from the Mozambique Channel to the west of the Indian Ocean…
Through a tax free zone and investments in the maritime economy (fishing, tourism and transport), Mayotte could thus have benefited from a dynamism that it lacked too much.
Breaking a curse is not easy; it requires both courage and daring. The Mahorais have fortunately demonstrated that they are not devoid of it in adversity. They will need just as much in the reconstruction.
