Books are one of the best resources to learn about a specific country. If you are a book lover attending CHOGM and want to explore more about Rwanda, here are some of the books written in English that you can look for whether online or in local bookshops as well as libraries.
Transforming Rwanda: Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction - Jean-Paul Kimonyo
Since the end of 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Rwanda has embarked on an ambitious, and often controversial, process of reconstruction. In this book, the author comprehensively analyses that process in the political, military, socioeconomic, and cultural arenas. He combines the objectivity of a scholar with the front-row perspective of a participant to provide an unparalleled analysis of the ups and downs of Rwanda's transformation. Drawing extensively on primary sources and grounding his study in historical context, he traces and analyzes the states of reconstruction as they have continued to unfold since the election of H.E Paul Kagame to the presidency.
From Red Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness – Denise Uwimana
In the space of a hundred days, a million Tutsi in Rwanda were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbours. At the height of the Genocide, as men with bloody machetes ransacked her home, Uwimana gave birth to her third son. With the unlikely help of Hutu Good Samaritans, she and her children survived. Her husband and other family members were not as lucky.
If this were only a memoir of those chilling days and the long, hard road to personal healing and freedom from her past, it would be remarkable enough. But Uwimana didn’t stop there. Leaving a secure job in business, she devoted the rest of her life to restoring her country by empowering other Genocide widows to band together, tell their stories, find healing, and rebuild their lives. The stories she has uncovered through her work and recounted here illustrate the complex and unfinished work of truth-telling, recovery, and reconciliation that may be Rwanda’s lasting legacy. Rising above their nation’s past, Rwanda’s Genocide survivors are teaching the world the secret to healing the wound of war and ethnic conflict.
The Official Mistake – Honoré Busoro
This book responds to questions on Rwanda's ethnic history from a youth perspective that clears any confusion on the subject. Having been born and raised after the Genocide, the author had countless questions that he lacked adequate responses to, however, through interacting with a number of Rwandan youth; he noticed that they too had similar questions. This propelled him to carry out research and address these questions in the book.
Rwanda: Rebuilding of a Nation
Edited by Alfred and Joseph Rwagatare, the book takes the reader through a sweeping panorama of Rwanda's history, from its recent past as a near-failed state to its present as a beacon of hope and successful innovations. Rwanda's rise from the ashes detailed in this book is the culmination of a visionary and laborious process of rebuilding a nation from the brink of collapse. It is also a story of reconciling people that had been taught to see each other as enemies.
The book shows that Rwanda's achievements have been possible because the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)'s development agenda is built on power-sharing, consensus-building, gender equality and the primacy of security.