The Province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in partnership with the east3ROUTE member countries namely the Seychelles, Mozambique and Swaziland will host a networking cocktail event on Wednesday, 23 April 2014 at the Le Meridien, Fisherman's Cove, Mahe, Seychelles. This event will launch the renowned east3ROUTE Expedition and Investment Seminar & Exhibition 2014 to the Seychelles business audience. The role of the east3ROUTE Investment Seminar and Exhibition is to provide a platform for engagement on tourism and related economic activities in this region. Key to this is creating a dialogue between economic role players in the public and private sectors thus enabling debate on the key issues facing development in the cross-border regions. Tourism has been identified as the central aspect of this debate with related sectors such as infrastructure development, services, retail and entertainment providing important contributions.   Mr Michael Mabuyakhulu, MEC for the Department of Economic Development and Tourism, announced at the end of the last year's event that as part of the east3ROUTE legacy project, trading stalls will be established between the regions border posts to improve on economic growth between each region for 2014. This is an annual element to the initiative.   For the first time in 2013, the east3ROUTE Investment Seminar and Exhibition held an exhibition themed 'Food, Fashion and Tourism.' This provided selected exhibitors the opportunity to showcase the food, fashion, accommodation and support services available in the regions. The interactive event allowed each region to showcase innovations in cuisine and culinary delicacies. Exhibitors were also able present their development projects to prospective investors.   Another first to the 2013 Investment Seminar & Exhibition was the development of the Economic Report publication. This publication delved deeply into helpful economic information pertaining to each region, this being useful to potential investors.   The desired outcome of these partnerships were to enhance the Seminar and Exhibitor experience, while ensuring the creation of tangible tools that ensure that lessons and experiences from the 2013 initiative have a lasting impact and continue to benefit the region.   By witnessing the east3ROUTE pay dividends through an increase in the tourism and trade movement between these countries and the long term vision to expand this arrangement further north or eastward to feature island nations in the Indian Ocean, the Republic of Seychelles joined in 2013 as the fourth east3ROUTE member partner. The initiative continues to prove itself by providing credible scope for African nations to complement each other in the campaign to attract tourists and investors to the continent.   The governments of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and the Republic of Seychelles will be driving the east3ROUTE Investment Seminar and Exhibition cocktail launch through their investment promotion agencies, Trade & Investment KwaZulu-Natal and the Seychelles Investment Bureau.  

Submitted on behalf of Zamo Gwala, CEO at Trade & Investment KwaZulu-Natal   Contact Person: Perusha Govender Position: Communications Officer Tel: 27 31 368 9600 Cell: 083 778 5032 Fax: 086 500 9862 Email: perusha@tikzn.co.za