Rwandan student wins international essay contest

Moses Asiimwe, a student of the University of Rwanda, has emerged among the top 50 African students who excelled in an Essay competition. The online competition was organised by Global Development Network (GDN) on the theme “Students across all Universities in Africa, imagine the future by 2025”. Moses was the only Rwandan on the list after writing an essay titled “The Hope for my Africa”. Asiimwe is a fourth year student pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. About the competition Students from universities across Africa were told to focus, in their essays, on three categories: economic conditions of Africa, environmental aspects of the nation and social and political positions of Africa, also taking into consideration current trends on the continent. Among the thousands of entries, fifty outstanding essays were selected as winners. Each of the fifty winning students will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Accra, Ghana, to attend a two-day conference scheduled for June 18, 2014. In attendance at the conference will be leading intellectuals from the world over to brainstorm on the problems identified by the essay writers, and to suggest possible solutions to them in a bid to put Africa on the path to a bright future. Asiimwe speaks out Commenting on his achievement, a proud Asiimwe, said: “I feel delighted; I am happy with my achievement. It’s such an honour seeing my university being represented in this academic venture.” Speaking about his essay, Moses said: “I focused mainly on inflation and tried to predict its trend by 2025, taking into account the geographical distribution in Africa, its population and economics. Other important factors were the role of natural resources as far as economic progress in Africa is concerned. This is because Africa is endowed with vast natural resources such as gold, oil. Finally, I attempted to analyse the urbanisation-versus-environment dilemma that faces developing states. I tried to analyse what effect urbanisation will have on the environment in the future.” As the lanky student prepares for the award ceremony and the journey ahead, he vows to put his innovative ideas to the service of society. “This award provides me a big opportunity to share information with other people from different countries. However, most of all I’m looking forward to sharing these ideas with people at home as we seek a way forward to development.”