📷 Photo: State House (Seychelles), file photo dated 2024
VICTORIA, Seychelles — The Seychelles Tennis Association and the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation signed a memorandum of understanding this week aimed at opening junior and coaching exchanges, sharing high-performance expertise and giving Seychellois players a clearer pathway into International Tennis Federation-sanctioned competition in Central Asia, in a deal that connects the Indian Ocean archipelago to one of the most heavily invested tennis markets outside Europe.
The Seychelles side was led by the President of the Seychelles Tennis Association, Ms Fatime Kanté, while the Kazakhstan delegation was led by Mr Bulat Utemuratov, who has been President of the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation since 2007 and was elected a Vice-President of the International Tennis Federation in September 2019. The agreement frames the partnership around junior player development, coach education, exchange of training methodologies and joint participation in friendly competitions, with both federations committing to identify and prepare athletes for ITF junior and senior circuits.
Ms Kanté has been at the centre of the revival of organised tennis in Seychelles since the 2024 grand reopening of the renovated Roche Caiman tennis facility, a project that overhauled five courts and was jointly funded by the Government of Seychelles and the International Tennis Federation. At that ceremony she called the upgraded facility “a remarkable leap forward” for grassroots and professional tennis alike, according to the State House of Seychelles. The new partnership with Kazakhstan is the next step in using those courts as a launch pad for international-level competition.
Kazakhstan has invested heavily in tennis over the past two decades and the federation supports centres in 17 regions of the country, according to Mr Utemuratov’s own LinkedIn profile. The federation is also a longstanding partner of the Asian Tennis Federation, which hosted its most recent board meeting in Astana on 13 and 14 May and used the occasion to push for partnerships with non-Asian tennis nations, a position the federation summarised in its Astana meeting synopsis. The Seychelles agreement gives the Kazakhstan federation a foothold in the Indian Ocean that complements its existing ITF and Asian Tennis Federation ties.
The bilateral move also comes against a wider pattern of expanding cooperation between Seychelles and Kazakhstan at the diplomatic level. In February 2026, Seychelles’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a senior Kazakh delegation in Addis Ababa where both parties discussed “the necessary steps to prepare and conclude such a document, which could become a strong legal foundation for the further development of the partnership between the two countries”, according to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan release. Sports diplomacy is a familiar vehicle for smaller states in their engagement with Central Asia, and the tennis memorandum is the first concrete deliverable from that broader track.
For Seychelles, the timing is opportune. The country is preparing to send players to the Davis Cup Africa Group V competition in the coming weeks, and the new partnership gives the federation a credible training partner to prepare the team for the rigours of an international junior calendar. Ms Kanté has repeatedly pointed to the ITF’s continued investment in Seychelles tennis, including the 2024 court renovation and the federation’s support for national team travel, as evidence that the federation is serious about lifting the country’s standing in the ITF world rankings.
The memorandum will be reviewed annually by both federations, with the option to extend or expand its scope based on the volume and quality of exchanges. The next milestone is expected to be a reciprocal visit by a Seychellois junior team to Kazakhstan later this year, with a corresponding visit by a Kazakh delegation to Roche Caiman in early 2027.
Sources cited: 1. State House of Seychelles, “Tennis Association Unveils Renovated Courts at Grand Reopening Ceremony”, 2 August 2024,
