Youth Programme Launches in Seychelles as Herminie Meets COMESA Secretary General
đź“· Photo: State House (Seychelles)
VICTORIA, Seychelles — President Dr Patrick Herminie and the Secretary General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Mrs Chileshe Mpundu Kapwepwe, used a courtesy call at State House on Monday to take stock of a partnership that now spans trade, gender equality and youth empowerment, and to launch a new regional training programme that will deliver capacity-building support to Seychellois entrepreneurs.
The President opened the meeting by thanking COMESA for funding the capacity-building training and industrial equipment that, through the Regional Enterprise Competitiveness and Access to Markets Programme (RECAMP), have strengthened the Seychelles Chapter of the COMESA Federation of Women in Business (COMFWB). He cited the representation of women and youth in his Cabinet, the National Assembly and Government as evidence of the priority his administration places on the issue, and pointed to a new COMESA-backed training initiative for young people, delivered through the COMFWB incubation and innovation hub, that the Secretary General had come to Seychelles to launch.
Mrs Kapwepwe set out the purpose of her mission. The new programme, she told the President, has already proven successful in other COMESA Member States and will now be hosted in Seychelles. It will equip start-ups and small businesses with business management training and capacity-building support, with particular attention to preserving traditional production skills while creating employment for young people, in coordination with Government ministries and the private sector. The Secretary General said the programme was designed to increase the economic participation of women and youth, in line with Seychelles’ support for the wider COMESA agenda.
On trade, the President informed Mrs Kapwepwe that Seychelles officially launched its Electronic Certificate of Origin (eCO) system on 17th June, becoming the sixth COMESA Member State to do so. He linked the rollout to the Revenue Commission’s wider digitisation drive and to national efforts to ease the conduct of business. He also renewed his call for the full operationalisation of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, urging COMESA to champion the priorities of Small Island Developing States within the bloc.
The meeting ranged across the breadth of the partnership. The President thanked COMESA for deploying the joint AU-COMESA Election Observation Mission during Seychelles’ General Elections last year, and for funding the participation of two Seychellois Electoral Commissioners in a capacity-building workshop in Kenya. He raised fisheries as an area for closer technical cooperation, and acknowledged recent COMESA donations to Seychelles, including a desktop computer for the National Bureau of Statistics and metrology equipment for the Bureau of Standards.
The Secretary General briefed the President on the COMESA Medium-Term Strategic Plan 2026 to 2030, due to be formally launched at the COMESA Summit in Harare this October. She outlined its priority areas for island states: connectivity, the Regional Shipping Line, maritime security, the Blue Economy and climate change, the last of which she said had gained growing prominence on the regional agenda. President Herminie said the Regional Shipping Line initiative had become paramount in light of instability in the Middle East, reiterating COMESA’s important role in helping facilitate trade across the region.
Mrs Kapwepwe congratulated the President on his election and thanked him for the opportunity to meet, while President Herminie wished her every success with the remainder of her programme in Seychelles. Closing the meeting, the Secretary General expressed confidence that the partnership would continue to deliver tangible benefits for the Seychellois people and for the wider region.
Also present at the meeting were the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Mr Barry Faure; the Minister for Industry and Enterprise, Ms Geralda Desaubin, and the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Ambassador Ian Madeleine.
Source: State House Seychelles, 20 July 2026.
