Africa-Press – Seychelles. The organisers have said a series of fairs and workshops organised last month for young entrepreneurs, secondary and post secondary students and the public in general to encourage development in entrepreneurship, science, technology, innovation has generated much interest which is a great encouragement.
“We wanted to highlight the work done in relation to entrepreneurship as well as science, technology and innovation.
“Our aim is to continue to generate public interest at all levels in these subjects which are all closely related,” Michael Nalletamby, the principal secretary in the Department of Investment in the Ministry of Investment, Entrepreneurship and Industry told the press recently during a briefing which was also attended by Xavier Estico, the director general of the division of science, technology and innovation (DSTI) within the same ministry.
“We’ve organised a number of activities starting with the Global Entrepreneurship Week during which we launched the National Entrepreneurship Strategy as well as the Business, Technology and Innovation Incubator which are crucial to push for development of the entrepreneurial spirit.
“The overall objective is to give mentorship and technical support to encourage those people who have an entrepreneurial idea to commercialise their project.
A series of fairs were organised in the Camion Hall grounds as well as on Praslin and the theme for the Global Entrepreneurship Week this year was ‘Connecting Business for Success’,” PS Nalletamby explained.
“The fairs were not only for businesses to sell their products but also for business operators to meet potential clients and suppliers which is good for business development and growth. This aims to also increase the success of their businesses. There has also been a series of workshops for secondary and post secondary students to expose them to existing support they can get if they have any entrepreneurial ideas in the future and also to help those people already in business to better connect with the ministry and be aware of the support that exists to help them,” he noted.
“In fact the whole Entrepreneurship Week was centred around the theme ‘Connecting Businesses for Success’ and this is what we tried to achieve not only to connect businesses with government so that they understand the support and we understand the gaps where we need to act but also to connect businesses to businesses so they could subsequently have a network through which they can provide each other support, be it technical or to assist each other with supplies and this is the spirit of the global entrepreneurship week,” PS Nalletamby remarked.
In terms of the Science, Technology and Innovation policy review which also started around the same time, it is being conducted with the support of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) and it is a process which will continue until May next year.
“As far as interests and participation in these activities are concerned, we are satisfied but we can always push to do better. We will continue to work with all our partners on different other aspects and perspectives we have planned and the theme will continue to guide us in our work throughout the coming year,” PS Nalletamby said.
Mr Estico for his part remarked that the launch of the Business, Technology and Innovation Incubator that also took place during the Global Entrepreneurship Week is the result of a lot of work and it gives them the confidence that they will be able to sustain the effort in making this ecosystem work and it is also thanks to the government and also the UNDP to give them the possibility and support to follow training in Singapore in incubation and innovation management.
The delegation which went to Singapore earlier this year was headed by the Minister for Finance, National Planning and Trade, Naadir Hassan, supported by the Minister for Entrepreneurship, Investment & Industry, Devika Vidot, and the group also comprised several stakeholders from different agencies.
“It was a great opportunity to get an insight into how Singapore is a model and we also get the exposure and the opportunity to develop south-south cooperation and identify agencies in Singapore that can support the incubator. I think this gave us the confidence that we have a network that can help us to run the incubator effectively to be able to create the ecosystem for innovative ideas – from ideation to commercialisation in different clusters. But however I want to highlight that the funding we have for this is from the African Development Bank and it is more geared for projects in the blue economy cluster and we are already working on a number of start-ups in this cluster with innovative projects that want to be incubated,” Mr Estico highlighted.
Meanwhile regarding the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, a workshop was held to work on its review which was overdue.
Mr Estico noted that the new policy will take into account the new vision of the ministry which is more oriented towards wealth creation, sustainable employment.
“We are also focusing all our resources and effort on integrating science and technology and innovation towards achieving this vision. In this regard the policy is looking not only at how we can fit into this vision but also at reinforcing the ecosystem that will support entrepreneurship and more particularly the national system on innovation which in my opinion is very fragmented at this point in time and also shift our effort more towards innovation as I believe Seychelles’ potentials is more into innovation. But we cannot have innovation without an enabler which is ICT on which a lot of focus is being placed and equally focus is also being directed to the digital economic transformation especially when it comes to its related institutional arrangements structure. We are working in synergy to show how we can have the action plan to create the environment for digital entrepreneurship in Seychelles.
“We have to say that this is a big market, really huge and it’s dynamic and Seychelles needs to be part of it even though we have been slow to start we have to gear ourselves to also benefit from this industry through diversifying our economy,” Mr Estico remarked.
Around this same time Mr Estico said the victory of Team Seychelles in the Robotic Challenge in Geneva was also being celebrated.
“Our team was ranked 38th which was exceptionally good and it came to reinforce our vision to make sure that the younger generation move towards the frontier technologies which are very important as we cannot miss out but need to connect to all these technologies – robotic, block chain, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, coding as well as the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology.
“We are very project-based and part of our work is to look at different projects and see how they fit into the overall objective of the ministry and moreover, in support of the digital transformation to make government more efficient, we at the Division of Science and Technology are building systems/platforms that will help, for instance the new customer management platform of the Seychelles Investment Bureau. We are also building benefit sharing platform to prevent Seychelles from losing out on different benefits and this platform will merge with the National Research Foundation which would help us to electronically manage our research, genetic resources, as well as our traditional knowledge so that it can be tracked and any benefits generated from whatever is ours and is taken out of the country, these platforms will track them and Seychelles will benefit,” Mr Estico highlighted.
He concluded by pointing out that the Global Entrepreneurship Week this year was the consolidation of efforts put in over the years and while not everything was able to be showcased but at least it gave an insight into what is happening within the ministry in terms of supporting entrepreneurship, innovation and science and technology in Seychelles in general.
Both PS Nalletamby and Mr Estico said they are satisfied with the level of interest the different activities have generated at all levels, be it at governmental, institutional or public level.
They said participation at the fairs was testimony to people’s interest in such activities, especially the young.
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