It was the biggest off-campus event organised by students of the African Leadership University (ALU) Rwanda since the institution set foot in the country last year.

Held under the theme, The Arts In Leadership, the three-day festival took place at the rooftop of the Kigali Convention Centre last week.

The festival was first unveiled in March this year, as a platform for the ALU community to come together to celebrate the arts and cultural diversity.

Under the festival theme, students brainstormed on the place of the arts and culture in leading societies through development and change.

Stage performances ranged from music, drama and fashion to poetry and spoken word.

Prior to the festival, students from the varsity engaged arts and cultural leaders, people from the creative sector and practitioners drawn from various art disciplines and practices.

One of these was the photographer Chris Schwagga, who facilitated a workshop on photography. Some of the results of the deliberations from the workshops were then incorporated in the preparations for the festival.

The African Leadership University is a network of world-class tertiary educational institutions whose mission is to produce three million young African leaders over the next 50 years.

The institution’s first campus, the African Leadership College, was inaugurated in Mauritius in 2015.

In September last year, the university opened its second campus in Kigali – at the Kigali Heights commercial complex.

The Rwandan campus boasts a student intake from across 27 African countries.

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