A business incubation centre will be established in Seychelles next year through a virtual signing of a memorandum of understanding between the COMESA Federation of Women in Business (COMFWB) Seychelles Chapter and the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI).

The agreement, signed on Wednesday, proposes a partnership to deliver business incubation and apprenticeship programme for young men and women across Seychelles.

COMFWB Seychelles will front the youths and women-led enterprises for mentorship. KIRDI on the other hand will bring on board its expertise in product development, product standard certification, and quality and further leverage current partnerships to better the capacity of SMSEs in Seychelles.

The chairperson of the COMFWB Seychelles Chapter, Claudette Albert, said, "This is a milestone for us, in terms of capacity building we will be able to develop our support and incubation programme by next year. We are already providing some training programmes for incubation such as the project to develop products from fish skin."

Albert shared that the "MOU will help us with expertise from Kenya where they can support us with training. Furthermore, while we wait for our centre to be built, we can also send entrepreneurs interested to Kenya where they can follow different training on a paying basis."

Seychelles COMFWB is also being assisted by the Citizenship Engagement Platform Seychelles (CEPS).

The chief executive of CEPS, Alvin Laurence, said they agreed to build the Incubation Centre on the same land next to the CEPS House on the man-made island of Ile du Port.

"There is already a plan to build the CEPS House and it includes an environmental and economic component. This lab will be built as the first incubation centre and will answer these components. Entrepreneurs will be able to gain access to equipment and space without needing major installation costs initially," said Laurence.

"The CEPS House itself is already in an advanced phase and we expect to begin before the end of this year. The property is located just after the Trotters Stop School at Ile du Port."

Albert confirmed that the building will be modular to speed up the building time. She added that they are also receiving assistance from several other donors for other components related to the project.

"The European Union is helping with the equipment needed at SCR2 million ($142,000). COMESA (Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa) is also helping support the project through the technical assistance programme," she added. 

She confirmed that they expect to establish a separate incubator to deal specifically with Blue Economy projects under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Seychelles will be the first in the Business Incubator for African Woman Entrepreneurs (BIAWE) group in the region to implement such a project.

Signing the agreement on behalf of KIRDI, the director general of KIRDI, Dr Calvin Onyango said, "We as KIRDI are ready and willing to transfer skills and technologies to others to boost their SME profile and productivity."