Southern African Indian Ocean island state, Seychelles holds many common values shared with Botswana, and the two states could leverage and build on each other’s experiences to enhance their respective trade and governance structures.
This was said by the President, Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi while welcoming the newly appointed High Commissioner of Seychelles to Botswana, Ambassador Claude Morel, to the Office of the President on Tuesday, where the new envoy presented his Letters of Credence.
The Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 small islands with a population of around 100 000 people, has Africa’s highest nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. It is consistently ranked by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as having among the continent’s highest human development index, and also internationally ranked as Africa’s least corrupt state.
With Botswana also regularly doing well in these governance and economic indices, the two states could learn from each other’s experiences to further improve towards higher income and strengthened instruments of democratic governance, President Masisi said.
Dr Masisi encouraged Ambassador Morel to build on this to bolster bilateral relations further and enhance collaboration in areas such as trade, education and tourism, where the Seychelles had done exceptionally well.
For his part, Ambassador Morel agreed that the two countries could explore how they could partner in the education sector, and Botswana could learn from them the industry of aquaculture, which is the breeding, raising and harvesting of fish and aquatic plants.
Also on the same day, Ambassador Antonis Mandritis of Cyprus presented his credentials to President Masisi and spoke of partnership in the sectors of higher education, tourism and the maritime industry.
Ambassador Mandritis said Cyprus like Botswana believed in the values of dialogue, peaceful resolution of conflict, the democratisation of the global governance architecture, sovereignty and territorial integrity for all nation states.
President Masisi noted that Botswana, despite being a landlocked country, joined the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a specialised agency of the United Nations that regulates shipping, because of the country’s ambitions of being a player in the maritime industry, and was willing to learn from Cyprus owing to its 'stellar performance in shipping and logistics.'ENDS
