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Archive -Seychelles

Finance staff members excel in AUSAID Masters programme |09 September 2013

Four employees from the Ministry of Finance, Trade and Investment (MOFTI) have been recognised for academic excellence from various Australian universities as part of a programme run by AUSAID.

Ziyaad Ebrahim, Brenda Bastienne, Irene Croisée and Roseline Hoareau all excelled after being awarded scholarships for their Masters degrees under the Australia Awards programme, which aims to promote knowledge, education links and enduring ties between Australia and its neighbours.

Ziyaad Ebrahim, who is Trade Consultant at the Ministry, was the most recent to receive accolades for his studies, being recently awarded the 2013 Adelaide Law School Prize called the “Dean’s Certificate”.

Mr Ebrahim explained that the government of Australia invited Seychellois nationals to apply for scholarships under a programme called “Australian Scholarships for Africa” through the ministry of Foreign Affairs.  

The scholarships were first advertised in 2010, but the Masters he wanted to do in Trade and Development was not offered at the time.
“However, a scholarship to study this particular subject was offered in 2011,” he said. “I applied for it, and I won the scholarship following an exam and an interview, which was held in Pretoria, South Africa in 2011.”

Mr Ebrahim’s university application was accepted by the University of Adelaide in Australia, and he left Seychelles soon thereafter to pursue his studies and returned in mid March 2013, after achieving a distinction in his chosen degree.

“As a result of my academic achievements I was invited to join a professional association called ‘Golden Key International Society’ (Asia-Pacific Chapter),” said Mr Ebrahim. “Because my results were within the top 15% of the University, I am now a member of this association.”  

He is not alone in being awarded Golden Key membership though; Brenda Bastienne, director-general of the Policy and Strategy Division at MOFTI, also became a member of the prestigious society. This came in her first year of studies after she was awarded the Raymond Apthorpe Graduate Diploma Prize for being the most outstanding student for the year 2011 at the Crawford School of Public Policy in Canberra.

“In 2012, I completed my Masters in Public Policy specialising in Policy Analysis, and was awarded the Master of Public Policy Prize as the most outstanding student for the course in the graduating class of 2012,” said Ms Bastienne.

“Upon completion of my studies, I have returned to the Ministry and to the Policy and Strategy Division where I was promoted to the post of director-general early this year.”
Irene Croisée, the director of Public Budget Management in the Financial Planning and Control Division, started her studies for a Masters in Applied Economics under the AUSAID Scholarship Programme in February 2011 at the Curtin University in Western Australia.  

“My research paper was based on the determinants and effects of Foreign Direct Investment on Seychelles as a small developing economy and island state,” she said.
Ms Croisée graduated in June 2012 with a distinction and was placed among the top 5% of her cohort.

Last year, Roseline Hoareau, who is a business analyst at the Public Enterprise Commission, started a two-year Masters course in Public Policy at Murdoch University in Australia through the Australia Awards programme.

The Master in Arts of Public Policy entails looking at the development and analysis of policies from a range of perspectives including policy cycles, starting from the initiative stage and concluding with the evaluation stage.

“The most fascinating part of the cycle was the evaluation of policies and programmes, which I found to be lacking in the Seychelles,” said Ms Hoareau. “While government keeps injecting funds into numerous programmes across the country, there is often no proper evaluation of these policies and programmes. Evaluation is important as it allows government to make decisions as to whether they should be continued or disbanded altogether.”

Ms Hoareau’s dissertation, entitled ‘Policy Transfer; a Seychelles perspective”, delved into the new concept of policy transfer, which refers to a process whereby knowledge, policies or administrative arrangements shifts from one nation or policy domain to another.

“Given that Seychelles had just been involved in a significant reform programme, I developed a case study to look at policy transfer from the perspective of a small island development state,” she said. “Given the word limit, I concentrated on the social consequences of policy transfer in Seychelles. Seychelles is a typical case of policy transfer, given that macroeconomic reform is not something new, and it’s something which has been experienced by many countries in the past.”

Overall, Ms Hoareau is confident that what she has learnt at University will help her to become a better policy analyst.
“The new knowledge that I attained from my master degree will surely complement my previous skills and work experience,” she said.

The Minister for Finance, Trade and Investment, Pierre Laporte has extended his congratulations to the four members of his staff on their achievements and said that the Australia Awards programme had proven to be of tremendous benefit to the ministry and the country as a whole.

“The Ministry of Finance employees who have studied under this programme have indeed done Seychelles proud with their excellent results, and I am confident that they will continue to contribute to the country’s growth and stability as a result of what they have learned.”

“It is always a priority to try to ensure that Seychelles, being a small island developing state, receives as much assistance as possible to empower and educate its people at all levels and in all types of fields. We are of course, grateful to the government of Australia for the scholarship programme and we hope that it continues to produce more highly-skilled Seychellois graduates in the future.”

 

 

 

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