The Pan-African Movement (PAM) Rwanda Chapter on Friday, October 20, convened its first meeting with Africans who live and work in the country to discuss the continent’s history, development agenda and challenges that hinder it.
Rwanda’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations Amb. Joseph Nsengimana, a pan-Africanist, was the guest of honour. He gave a lecture on how the Pan-African Movement came into being, following the abolition of slave trade which had exploited the continent in all forms, including human capital, economic development, among others.
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The event was attended by people from multiple African countries, such as Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, among others.
"We held this meeting with Africans who live, work or study or do business in Rwanda to mobilise them for different activities of the Pan-African Movement. It is also part of the preparation for the Africa Liberation Day 2024, where we will celebrate 61 years of Independence Day in Africa,” said PAM Rwanda’s Commissioner of Political Integration Michael Shyaka.
He said the meeting was organised to hear from the Africans living in Rwanda, engage them in the Pan-African Movement and, if they have any problem, to find solutions together and do advocacy for them in different institutions.
Shyaka said with the mobilisation of more all categories of Africans, not only intellectuals but also the ordinary citizens, the Pan-African Movement today offers good hope for change more than ever.
"As an African, I have the responsibility to build my continent. I know it&039;s a journey. We won't achieve development in the next one year or two years, but again it won't take as long as before,” he said.
"So, the hope is there because we are engaging young people in the secondary schools in high schools and universities. We are also preaching the good news of the Pan-African Movement to the village level to the national level.”
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The participants said Pan-African meetings should be normalised and that countries like Rwanda were an example of what could be achieved if leadership in Africa was solutions-centred.
Mahmoud Elshafei, an Egyptian businessman with investments in Rwanda, said: "For any businessman to invest in any country, you have to look at two things: security and laws, because you’re going to invest your money, have stores and make agreements during tendering processes. I chose to invest in Rwanda because there are nice people, and it’s an organised country. And all that has to do with Pan-Africanism, and we appreciate it."
Elshafei, the founder and CEO of Sawa African, has lived in Rwanda for over a decade.
"I wish a lot of African countries could come to learn from Rwanda; to learn from the leadership; and learn about how Rwandans in a very short time came over all the challenges they faced in history and decided to build a better country,” he said.
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For Mandeg M. Djama, a Djiboutian national doing a master’s degree at Kigali Independent University (ULK), Pan-African meetings involving the elder comrades and young people, especially students, will pay the way for the change the continent needs to develop.
"We see that the Western world, Europe and America, are not treating us as equals. They're not viewing Africans as equal people, colonisation is still going on – whether it's through financial matters, legal matters, or whether it is infrastructure challenges we are facing in Africa,” Djama said.
Those westerners are coming here in Africa to look for natural resources and not doing anything for African people and if they do, they give us 1 per cent of what they have taken us, through aid. African students, just like me, are fed up with this situation and we are ready to take our destiny into our hands. That's why we are joining those meetings and African meetings,” she said.