Maarco Francis

Victoria first

Maarco Francis was born on 1 November 1977 in Victoria, the capital he would one day represent in boardrooms on three continents. Nothing was handed to him. What he has, he built, and that distinction runs through everything that follows, because Seychelles does not need another politician who has read about work. It needs a leader who has done it.

The builder

His record as an entrepreneur spans the real economy, not just paper. Levasseur Rum, a Seychellois brand carrying our name abroad. AAA International Services, serving the international business sector. Grow Seychelles, an agricultural initiative pointed at the same food security the Programme now promises the nation. Companies that hired Seychellois, paid Seychellois, and survived on results. By 2015, Africa Intelligence ranked him among the five most influential businessmen in the country.

The servant

Influence, for Maarco Francis, kept turning into service. In March 2013, at thirty-five, the private sector elected him President of the Seychelles Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and re-elected him in 2015. For three years he was the voice of every Seychellois business, from the market stall to the shipping line, in the rooms where policy is made. He led the Seychelles International Financial Services Association in the years the sector fought for its reputation. He headed the Better Life charitable foundation. He served on the National AIDS Council and the National Arts Council, and he carried the flag for Seychelles at African Union, Indian Ocean Rim Association and Commonwealth summits.

Count what that adds up to: enterprise, finance, agriculture, charity, health, culture, diplomacy. There is no other figure in Seychellois public life today who has led across all of them before asking for a single vote.

The calling

He saw politics from the inside long before he entered it, running Philippe Boullé's independent presidential campaign in 2006 as a young man. Then he spent seventeen more years watching successive governments promise what his businesses had to actually deliver: jobs, wages, results. In July 2023 he stopped waiting. He founded the Seychelles United Movement, registered that August, and in 2025 he stood for President of the Republic against the two oldest machines in the country.

When the campaign ended, he did what few do. He stayed. The morning after the vote, while others disappeared until the next election, Maarco Francis went back to the districts. Because the Programme was never a campaign document. It is a promise with his name on it.

"Study our proposals. Challenge our plans. Hold us to our word. But above all, use your voice. Your vote is your power."

The standard

Every SUM policy passes one test before it enters the Programme: does it serve the Seychellois who cannot buy influence? If a measure cannot be explained honestly to a family at their kitchen table, it does not belong in the plan. That is the standard Maarco Francis holds this movement to, and the one a SUM government will be held to in office. A husband and a father of two daughters, he is building the country he wants to hand them.