(Seychelles News Agency) - The second Seychelles executive leadership programme for 29 of the country's top government officials was launched on Thursday as part of a drive to modernise its civil service, in a ceremony held at the Savoy Resort and Spa.

President Wavel Ramkalawan said his hope for this cohort is the same as for the last group, which to “ensure that we continue to build our people and ensure that we have Seychellois in all those positions guiding our nation, helping our people to not only discover their own talents, but also serving the people”.

The programme is the result of Seychelles and the UAE signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to modernise and transform the island nation's public service, which took place in Dubai on March 29, 2022, on the sidelines of the World Government Summit. Since then, 27 chief executives and senior officials from Seychelles have graduated from the programme.

Abdulla Nasser Lootah, the UAE's Deputy Minister for Cabinet Affairs for Competitiveness and Knowledge Exchange, said "This is a remarkable day for us as we launch the second cohort of the Seychelles executive leadership programme. This is a five-month programme with six modules...And we see that there will be greater programmes in the future; some of the programmes will be general in nature, and some of them will be focused on certain domains." These include the finance, health and education sectors as well as logistics, urban planning, among others.

He added that they intend to create world class centres for this capacity building.

Meanwhile the Minister for Finance, National Planning and Trade, Naadir Hassan, told the press that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - sponsored programme, focuses on elements of digital solutions, foresight thinking and other new approaches to ensure that "the leaders in the different organisations in Seychelles have the right skill sets for them to be able to lead these organisations to ensure that they achieve their mandate.”

Hassan also said, “This is especially important for us as the modernisation of the public service is one of the main pillars of the National Development strategy, where we are looking at developing leaders in the civil service.”

He also explained that this would include the right attributes of strategic thinking to lead the country into the future.

The participants of the executive leadership programme have already completed two modules of their training. They will also have the chance to work on a project, aimed at further modernising their respective organisations, as well as spend five weeks in the UAE.