CHOGM 2018: UK-Rwanda relations
As the sun sets on the 2018 Commonwealth summit, momentum for Africa is heating up in more ways than one. News that Rwanda will host the next Commonwealth summit in 2020 has been greeted with much enthusiasm in the UK. Rightly so. Rwanda is not only an example of African success and...Thursday, April 26, 2018 - 10:47pm
Truly, this country has come a long, hard way
A visit to the Campaign Against Genocide (CAG) Museum in Kigali is a plunge into the scary hole of the near-impossibility of recreating a genocidal Rwanda into the new country we see today! That the museum is in the basement of the Parliamentary building doesn’t help matters. The terror of...Thursday, April 26, 2018 - 10:28pm
Independent notaries welcome but there is need to exercise caution
This week saw, for the very first time, the swearing-in of independent notaries. With the first group of over 900 already approved, it will mean that a district will have an average of three notary officials on top of the existing ones. Authenticating documents in the past was a very tedious and...Thursday, April 26, 2018 - 10:24pm
Time for a global financial makeover
NEW YORK – In 2015, United Nations member states came together and committed to achieving a comprehensive and universal set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) spanning all dimensions of economic and social development. Investment will be indispensable to achieving the SDGs, which aim...Thursday, April 26, 2018 - 10:15pm
All media houses adhere to the same laws, there are no sacred cows
A few months ago, a local Christian radio station, Amazing Grace, aired a controversial sermon that attracted a flurry of condemnations, especially among women. It particularly targeted women, saying that they were the source of all evil and many other demeaning labels of incitement. Rwanda Media...Thursday, April 26, 2018 - 8:15am
A seat at the proverbial ‘table’ through real estate investments
For much of our history, the black community has used real estate as the primary tool of investment for wealth creation. Many of us grew up watching our parents buy properties which they rented for income and later sold to create a retirement nest egg or kept to leave as an inheritance. This has...Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - 9:51pm
A trade tutorial for Trump
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – US President Donald Trump has declared that America’s $500 billion trade deficit with China means that the US is “down” $500 billion. Apparently, he thinks that trade surpluses and deficits amount to profit and loss statements for countries. He could...Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - 9:48pm
The future of tech policy
STANFORD – Technology and the largest tech firms are becoming increasingly controversial. Today, there are growing concerns about third parties accessing and manipulating Facebook user data; and before that, there was a raging debate about whether the government should be able to unlock...Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - 9:41pm
End of democratisation
‘You can fool some people sometime, but you can’t fool all the people all the time’ –Bob Marley, Get up, stand up! In the early 1950s, following the wave of independence in Africa and South America, former colonial powers wanted to ensure that their multinationals would...Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - 10:37am
Staying on track to end malaria
BASEL – Ending an epidemic is a marathon undertaking, and in the case of malaria, we are nearing the finish line. But we will need to keep up the momentum. Over the past few decades, governments, nongovernmental organisations, and the private sector have broken new ground in the science of...Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 11:53pm
Newly found mass graves raise more questions
Hardly a week had passed after the official mourning period for victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, than four mass graves of more victims were discovered on the outskirts of the city. As we go to press, the first grave has just been excavated and 207 bodies exhumed and more are...Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 11:50pm
In Rwanda education, science and technology are the new drivers of pan-Africanism
African politicians and intellectuals used to talk passionately about pan-Africanism. You hardly hear the word now, except among a small group dedicated to keep it alive. That, of course, does not mean that the idea is dead. Far from it. It is actually alive and well and flourishing in Rwanda. You...Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 12:44am
Editorial: REB has a lot of ground to cover; it should do so diligently
Rwanda Education Board (REB) seems to have learnt its lessons the hard way, but it was a necessary learning curve. Its top leadership was recently shaken up following a school textbook saga and confusion; foreign printers were contracted, who in turn subcontracted local firms who failed miserably...Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 12:40am
How inequality fueled the Euro crisis
BRUSSELS – Since the Great Recession of 2007-2009, most economists have begun to regard finance as a key driver of the business cycle. But the precise dynamics are not yet fully understood. For example, the University of Chicago’s Amir Sufi and Princeton’s Atif Mian argue that...Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 12:37am
The sky is not falling
VIENNA – Humans are partial to bad news. Media outlets reflect and shape this preference, feeding us woe and panic. Long, slow, positive trends don’t make it to the front page or to water-cooler conversations. So we develop peculiar misperceptions, especially the idea that a...Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - 12:32am
Researchers need to actively engage policymakers
Beginning today, Kigali will play host to a three-day workshop for top University lecturers and researchers from around the East African Community (EAC), with the goal of exploring ways of expanding postgraduate programmes across the region. Participants will seek to find solutions to critical...Monday, April 23, 2018 - 9:24am
Kwibuka24: Time to crack the whip on non-state actors
As we continue to commemorate the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi for the 24th time, we all need to be vigilant on certain Genocide denial elements (implicit and explicit), especially in the private sector and among non-governmental organisations, where government has little influence. This is because...Monday, April 23, 2018 - 8:37am
Any kind of humanitarian suffering must be averted
Towards daybreak of April 14, 2018, a coalition of countries comprising USA, Britain and France launched more than 100 missiles against Syrian targets in a strike that aimed at weakening President Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities. In the operation, as described by Lieutenant General...Sunday, April 22, 2018 - 11:14pm
A tale of two realities
MADRID – The opening line of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities retains its universality to this day. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Dickens writes, “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,… it was the spring of hope...Sunday, April 22, 2018 - 10:55pm
CHOGM is coming to Kigali and so is Mike Sonko
As a cool drizzle wetted the streets of Kigali during the evening rush hour, news trickled in that the British Prime Minister, Theresa May had announced that Rwanda will host the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting commonly referred to by its acronym, CHOGM. The light chats around cold...Sunday, April 22, 2018 - 12:52am
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