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Shyaka Kanuma at the East African reports on an interview with Paul Kagame,regarding Trading Blocs he asserts:

...If we have big regional blocs, then you will have a situation where more businesses from rich countries come looking for opportunities — and more direct investment means less reason to go looking for foreign aid.

“These rich countries still exercise control over us; all these human rights and media rights organisations and so on, their sole objective is to impose Western ideals and values on everyone; anyone who refuses to go along is blacklisted.
“If you reject even some of their suggestions or recommendations, you pay for it. It doesn’t matter either whether the suggestions aren’t practical for us or don’t fit our situation...[continue reading]

Image by skasuga via FlickrBenin Mwangi at African Path reports:

Paul Kagame has cut a striking image throughout the world as a leader who has been willing to go against the grain on so many levels to bring about real and lasting change in Rwanda.
Whether we are looking at the ICT industry, the tea and coffee industry, education, women's rights, or reconciliation he seems to always be at the forefront of his class-that class being the class of current African presidents and political leaders. And his leadership has not gone unnoticed in the since that since he came to leadership Rwanda has made a slow but very steady march towards stability and prosperity...[continue reading]

Image via Wikipedia

Rwanda is one of the few nations in the developing world spending more on education than on the military. Kagame re-wrote the constitution such that his party cannot have more than 50 percent of the seats in parliament. Though Kagame is from one ethnic group, his Prime Minister and 70 percent of his cabinet are from the other. Thirty percent of elected officials at the level of municipality, parliament, and cabinet are required to be women; and a world-leading 56 percent of parliament is now women. The country is secure and the World Bank's Doing Business report recognized Rwanda as the greatest reforming nation in the world last year.

Chris Blattman writes:
Checks and balances in democratic systems are sources of stability. No one man or woman can rule the state as a fiefdom, and no succession battle can so destroy a nation country.
Africa's strong man syndrome has, some argue, been the key to whatever meager development it has achieved. Witness Yoweri Museveni's Uganda, Paul Kagame's Rwanda, or Ellen Sirleaf's Liberia--both men (and the one woman) pulled their countries back from the brink and on the path to health and wealth.Yet today's Kagame or Sirleaf may be tomorrow's Kibaki or Mugabe--entrenched leaders who refuse to go when their time comes, destroying all they have wrought in the process...[continue reading]

Paul Kagame in the FT:

We appreciate support from the outside, but it should be support for what we intend to achieve ourselves. No one should pretend that they care about our nations more than we do; or assume that they know what is good for us better than we do ourselves. They should, in fact, respect us for wanting to decide our own fate...[continue reading]

Paul Kagame states:

“Without a knowledge base, Africa’s imperative for agricultural and industrial development to create wealth will remain unrealized. Nor will we be able to develop and manage water, energy, resources, health, climate change and biodiversity, to name a few fundamentals.”