New Swedish ambassador accredited |12 May 2021
Ambassador Vicini presents her credentials to President Ramkalawan (Photo source: State House)
The new ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Seychelles, Caroline Vicini, presented her credentials to President Wavel Ramkalawan at State House yesterday morning.
She has a mandate of five years and will be based in Nairobi.
During her accreditation visit, Ambassador Vicini seized the opportunity to congratulate President Ramkalawan on his historic win in the last presidential elections.
“It was good to see the change in power done in a very peaceful way. The world is going through quite a difficult time economically and I reassured the President that Swedish tourists will return soon as we get vaccinated as we are lagging behind in our vaccination campaign. There is certainly a great demand for people to start moving around in the world again and this is a wonderful country, where people would want to visit,” she said.
Ambassador Vicini said that they also talked about the fishing industry and about the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) Report on marine fisheries policy that Seychelles has produced. “My government was impressed by that and congratulated the Seychelles because it is a very important transparency measure to manage the fish stock more responsibly. We are grateful that Seychelles is in the forefront, and we wish this becomes a global and collective effort,” the ambassador said.
Ambassador Vicini noted that Sweden is working with Seychelles through the European Union. “We have had several partnerships in the fight against piracy etc and we can be best effective through the EU. Sweden contributes 1% of its GDP in foreign aid and we contribute a lot to various United Nations organisations. We hope that Seychelles benefit from all these efforts. Personally I want to develop something with the Seychelles,” Ambassador Vicini said.
The good diplomatic relations between the two countries, environment policies and human rights were among other topics of discussion between President Ramkalawan and Ambassador Vicini.
Ambassador Vicini also paid a courtesy visit to Vice-President Ahmed Afif with whom she discussed lengthily on how to bring tourists back to the Seychelles.
Vidya Gappy