Tag Archives: Rwanda

By The Independent Team With big strides made against both malaria and pneumococcal disease, Rwanda is on track to meet UN Millennium Development Goal number four, the reduction of child mortality, officials say. “Rwanda is one of the few countries in Africa that stands a chance of reaching the MDG …

BY Bonny Rwiyamilira A cloud of allegations is leading Rwanda to renege on earlier commitments to peacekeeping The chorus of denunciations over a leaked United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR) report that accuses the Rwandan Army of genocide in the 1990s against Hutus in the Democratic Republic of …

By Andrew M. Mwenda The former Tanzanian Prime Minister sat down with The Independent’s Managing Editor Andrew Mwenda to discuss the recent Rwanda elections. Salim was sent to Rwanda to lead the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) to observe preparations for the election, assess the process and make future recommendations. As …

By Andrew M. Mwenda President Paul Kagame last week won presidential elections by 95 percent of the vote. Such high performance was common in Sadam Hussein’s Iraq and other dictatorships. Basing on this analogy, many observers have concluded his victory was a product of political repression. But such an approach …

By Andrew M. Mwenda In the summer of 1995, former US president, Jimmy Carter, organised a conference on Rwanda in Tunis to ‘convince the RPF to be more ethnically inclusive by appointing Hutu politicians to cabinet’. In attendance were the presidents of Rwanda’s neighbours: Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Uganda’s Yoweri …

By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi Since he wrote his ‘Is Rwanda an African Success Story’ (The Independent, July 09-15), Timothy Kalyegira, easily the most committed of media skeptics about Rwanda and its President, Paul Kagame, has been the subject of much-animated discussion in Kigali. On a recent visit there, almost everyone I …

By Pascal Gahamanyi There is a lot of debate about Rwanda in Uganda, conducted in Ugandan newspapers and radio stations and the participants are Ugandan citizens. Those involved – whether as critics of the government in Kigali or as sympathisers are largely Ugandans. Rwandans wonder why this is so. Possibly …

By Andrew M. Mwenda   Recent events in Rwanda have filled my inbox. For example, a journalist in Uganda wrote to me on Skype in celebratory mood: ‘Finally your Rwanda (sic) is unravelling; pretty fast, very dramatically: Newspapers suspended ahead of elections, grenade blasts, senior army officers arrested, endless talk …

By Andrew M. Mwenda In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama says he has always been troubled by the gap between the magnitude of America’s challenges and the smallness of its politics. This makes even more sense in Africa. Nothing demonstrates it better than presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire and those …

By Andrew M. Mwenda Since her return to Rwanda as a presidential candidate, Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire has animated media interest. The main issue in her campaign is her claim that ‘those who killed the Hutu in the 1994 genocide have not been tried.’ This is another way of saying the …