đź“· Photo: State House (Seychelles)
VICTORIA, Seychelles — The Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs has asked the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa to back a new vocational training push aimed at women, youth and small entrepreneurs, a request the Comesa Secretary General, Mrs Chileshe Mpundu Kapwepwe, took up during an official visit this week and which now feeds into the regional bloc’s COYWA programme launched in Seychelles.
The Seychelles engagement falls under the Creating Opportunities for Youth and Women in Africa programme, a regional vehicle run by the Comesa Federation of Women in Business and funded through the African Union Development Agency’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development framework. The COMESA Secretariat confirmed the Seychelles launch in a LinkedIn briefing on 21 July 2026, noting that Kapwepwe held strategic engagements with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and with the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs to align the programme with national priorities on skills, entrepreneurship, employment creation and inclusive economic participation. The Secretary General’s brief also underlined the connection to the COMFWB Seychelles Incubation and Innovation Hub, which is being built at Ile Perseverance and is expected to be completed by mid-2027.
The bilateral groundwork goes back more than a year. In November 2025, COMFWB’s chief executive, Miti Chikakula, met Seychelles Ambassador Beryl Samson in Victoria as part of a regional due-diligence mission that included Egypt, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Tunisia and Zambia, according to the Seychelles Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The pair agreed that a national steering committee would be essential to drive and coordinate implementation of the incubation programme, with a launch initially targeted for June 2026.
President Patrick Herminie made the political economy case for Seychelles’ deepening partnership with the bloc this week, telling Kapwepwe during her courtesy call at State House that he was proud to cite the representation of women and youth in his own Cabinet, the National Assembly and Government as evidence of the priority his administration places on gender equality and youth empowerment, according to a State House news release. He thanked Comesa for funding, through the Regional Enterprise Competitiveness and Access to Markets Programme, the capacity-building training and industrial equipment that have strengthened the Seychelles chapter of the COMFWB.
The technical content of the cooperation is built on the Comesa Regional Strategy on the Economic Empowerment of Women, a draft of which was reviewed by representatives of nine member states in October 2024, including Seychelles, in a virtual consultative meeting hosted by the bloc. The strategy addresses “access to finance, education and skills development, market opportunities, and legal frameworks that can help level the playing field for women”, according to the COMESA Secretariat’s account of that meeting, and it draws on the bloc’s treaty articles and its Gender Policy that call for the integration of gender into member-state policies, institutions, procedures, programmes and activities.
Seychelles’ domestic gender architecture is centred on the Gender Secretariat, which sits inside the Research and Policy Planning Division of the Department of Family within the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Family. The Secretariat works with regional and continental partners including Comesa, the Southern African Development Community, the African Development Bank, the African Union, UN Women, UNECA and the OECD, according to its official profile. Its remit is to act as the permanent lead agency within the national Gender Management System and to facilitate gender mainstreaming across government, the private sector and civil society, which gives the ministry counterpart for the Comesa programmes a natural home.
The new COYWA-aligned training offer is expected to use the COMFWB Seychelles Incubation and Innovation Hub as its operational base, delivering business management, capacity-building and traditional production skills while opening routes to regional markets for women and youth-led start-ups. Implementation will be coordinated between the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Enterprise, the Seychelles chapter of COMFWB and the wider Comesa secretariat, with funding routed through the African Union Development Agency framework.
Sources cited: 1. COMESA Secretariat (LinkedIn), “Strengthening partnerships for youth and women empowerment in Africa”, 21 July 2026, . 2. State House of Seychelles, “President Herminie and COMESA Secretary General reaffirm partnership as Women and Youth Programme launches”, 20 July 2026, . 3. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Seychelles, “COMFWB Delegation Meets Seychelles Ambassador to Advance Youth and Women’s Economic Empowerment”, 21 November 2025, . 4. COMFWB Secretariat, “COMFWB Seychelles members discussed new Incubation and Innovation Hub with Minister Geralda Desaubin”, 14 May 2026, . 5. COMESA Secretariat, “Regional Strategy on Women Economic Empowerment”, 28 October 2024, . 6. Gender Secretariat, Department of Family, Ministry of Youth, Sports and Family (Seychelles), “About the Gender Secretariat”, .
