VICTORIA, Seychelles — Seychelles’ Ministry of Employment and Human Resource Planning on Monday opened Productivity Awareness Week 2026 with the theme “Transforming Productivity Through Technological Advancement and Artificial Intelligence”, running until Friday 31 July and aimed at motivating public and private sector workers to take up AI tools in their daily work.
Minister for Employment and Human Resource Planning Idith Alexander presided over the launch at the Seychelles Trading Company (STC) conference room, which was followed by a one-day workshop led by Kelvin Ombasa, a senior lecturer at The Guy Morel Institute (TGMI), the country’s principal in-service training college based at Ma Joie.
From Tuesday to Friday, groups of 25 students and their teachers will visit organisations to see workplace best practice in action and learn how AI and technology can lift productivity in the public and private sectors. The week is part of the ministry’s longer-running campaign to raise productivity, anchored in the work of the productivity unit at the employment department.
The theme was founded on last year’s discussions, which had already pointed to the significant influence that advanced technology is having on productivity across small island economies. The productivity week itself is designed to provide a platform for exchanging ideas and for strategising a future in which humans and machines work together more productively.
The 2026 Productivity Week comes as governments and development institutions are accelerating their work on AI policy. The World Bank’s World Development Report 2026, “Decoding AI for Development”, released in concept form earlier this year, finds that AI is best understood as a general-purpose technology whose development dividends will only be captured in lower and middle-income countries if governments invest in foundational infrastructure, expand internet and broadband, and build governance frameworks for data and AI standards.
The World Bank report warns that stronger-than-expected productivity gains from AI investment could provide a meaningful medium-term lift to growth, but that those benefits risk being concentrated in developed economies, the UN DESA World Economic Situation and Prospects 2026 adds. For small island developing states like Seychelles, the gap is widening.
Reorienting the conversation to small states is a stated goal of the World Bank’s report. The productivity gains from AI in agriculture, health and public service delivery are particularly relevant for island economies that have small labour markets and tight fiscal space, the bank’s WDR 2026 background paper programme notes in its overview of research directions.
TGMI, which runs certificate programmes in entrepreneurship, management, leadership, procurement, marketing, human resources, accounting and finance, information technology and librarianship, has been the country’s principal vehicle for in-service productivity training for public and private sector workers. Its launch event last year, on 18 July 2025, brought together chief executives and senior managers from across the public service to discuss the productivity theme.
The 2026 edition’s AI focus signals a deliberate move to bring frontier technology into mainstream public service training, a direction the ministry has signalled in successive Productivity Weeks.
Sources cited: World Bank, World Development Report 2026: Decoding AI (official report page, February 2026); World Bank, WDR 2026 background papers (research on AI and development); UN DESA, World Economic Situation and Prospects 2026, January 2026 (small island states context); The Guy Morel Institute, About page (in-service training scope and history); Seychelles Trading Company, About Us (STC conference room as launch venue).
