Seychelles: at sea managing intelligence

Seychelles faces pressure to reshape its security and intelligence structure, little changed for forty years, built to address the internal security interests of its former ruler France-Albert René. His outlook persists in diluted form under his successors. Seychelles faces new external challenges. A big risk is abuse of its position as a major off-shore financial centre. But Seychelles’ archipelagic nature gives other transnational challenges similar to other Indian Ocean island states and littoral countries like Kenya. These involve maritime security, fisheries, counter-smuggling and piracy. These are compounded by growing major power naval activity in the Indian Ocean. Much of this is adversarial placing Seychelles in a strategic cockpit in which it has few assets to deploy and deficient intelligence capability to analyse. Seychelles challenge is to evolve its intelligence capabilities when time is not in its side.