This agreement identified several departments and local authorities in South Africa to engage and work with the Seychelles for purposes of creating mutual commercial, cultural and other benefits that will see strengthened ties between the two countries.
The Seychelles delegation visit is timely as Mogale City is on the verge of implementing a revised international and intergovernmental approach. This approach, amongst other, aims to reposition the city as outward looking, and can thus attract investments, improve its work with local partners and communities. The process of repositioning the city will be built on a solid foundation of its competitive and comparative advantages.
Accompanied and facilitated by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), the Seychelles delegation was led by Principal Secretary Kevin Pereni, joined by the Director General and five administrators representing various portfolios within their government.
Although the coastal country has a menial population of 131 000 people, several opportunities for engaging and fostering collaboration with Mogale City were identified. These sought key learnings among other were on public participation, SMME development and support, economic sector diversification, culture and heritage, waste management strategies, improved guidance on the municipality’s localisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the journeys of developing a Voluntary Local Review (VLR) where South Africa was one of only nine other countries that submitted 10 VLRs to the United Nations at one go. Mogale City was one of the 10 municipalities in South Africa that completed a VLR for the first time in July 2024. The areas of interest from their end have also been propelled by government land scarcity, a saturated tourism market and other growing challenges.
Engagements between the two parties led to an agreement that will enable continuous collaboration thus form part of the national agreement between South Africa and Seychelles facilitated by SALGA. It was also agreed that a small team be constituted to crystalize specific areas of collaboration. It is anticipated that the road map in this instance will include a follow up discussion during next year’s second National Urban Forum that SA will be hosting.