Africans need knowledge and strong character to make a clear and firm opinion of their own in the fast-growing global affairs, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, has said. 

Mushikiwabo was speaking yesterday in Kigali as a panelist at a national symposium that featured discussions about 50 years of Africa’s independence, Rwanda’s 19 years since the Liberation War, and the role of Africa’s unity in the economic development of the continent. 

Mushikiwabo said that Africans will have to end rampant corruption, insecurity, and reliance on too much of foreign intervention if they are to record better achievements in their freedom and economic status. 

"Colonialism has hampered our ability to think for ourselves,” the minister said as she highlighted some of the reasons behind the continent’s ills.

She encouraged all Africans to strive to tell their own story if they are to succeed in developing themselves because the current situation where their story is told by foreigners, mostly former colonial masters, will not help them get out of troubles. 

"One of the things we have to avoid as Africans is failure to reject bad things that are said about us,” she said. "Are we talking or former colonisers are talking on our behalf? Africa has a voice but it’s not loud enough.” 

The official said that Africans will need both knowledge and strong character in order to have their place in the current world, where technology and trade have provided opportunities for most people but also pose risks of remaining behind for those who don’t innovate. 

"Africa’s voice in the global arena will require of us the combination of both knowledge and character,” she said.

Activists pitch home-grown solutions 

More than 200 participants attended the symposium which took place last evening at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (Kist). 

Apart from the foreign affairs minister, other panellists included the Chief Executive Officer of the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), Prof. Anastase Shyaka, historian and National University of Rwanda’s lecturer, Prof. Paul Rutayisire, as well as Dr Marie Christine Gasingirwa, Kist’s acting rector. 

Using the example of Rwanda, they all highlighted and encouraged the use of home-grown solutions to solve Africa’s problems while borrowing skills from abroad that are also relevant to local issues. 

"Stop thinking that whatever is best comes from abroad,” Dr Gasingirwa told the audience.

Rwanda is known for having applied local approaches to deal with some of its most pressing challenges such as trying Genocide suspects where community-based courts, Gacaca, have been helpful, Imihigo (performance contracts) to fast-track development, and Abunzi (local mediators) to settle conflicts, among other policies. 

"We have been trying to use it (home-grown approach) in Rwanda and the results are good,” Shyaka said. 

The symposium was organised by the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to serve as a platform for a dialogue between politicians, academics, and the general public to talk about Rwanda and Africa’s socio-economic transformation and how to deal with current challenges for the continent’s development. 

Participants at the forum lit the so called ‘African Renaissance Torch’ in line with marking the Golden Jubilee of the Organisation of African Unity, which later became the African Union, and as a sign of Rwanda’s commitment to other African countries’ will to reverse the continent’s current story line of despair into the narrative of opportunity and potential.