Paul Kagame Archives - Humanosphere

Paul Kagame

Howard Buffett Foundation attacks UN to shift blame from Rwanda |

Howard G. Buffett is pushing the international community to fully restore aid to Rwanda.

When a UN Group of Experts (GoE) report found that Rwanda was supporting rebels fighting a deadly conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a number of countries including the U.S. and Britain cut or suspended foreign aid in protest.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame steadfastly denied supporting the Congo militias that have been wreaking havoc along the Rwanda-Congo border, but the evidence was strong enough to convince even some of Kagame’s biggest supporters that Western powers needed to send a message of disapproval.

That didn’t include Howard Buffett, Warren Buffett’s son, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Buffett and Blair argued against the move, contending that reducing aid to Rwanda would just cause more harm than good to the unstable Great Lakes region of central Africa.

“Cutting aid does nothing to address the underlying issues driving conflict in the region, it only ensures that the Rwandan people will suffer — and risks further destabilizing an already troubled region,” Blair and Buffett wrote in a recent Foreign Policy article.

This was followed by a report from the Howard G Buffett Foundation making the same points. The report went further by questioning the reliability of the GoE – the group that originally reported evidence the the Rwandan government was supporting rebels in the eastern DRC.

It’s worth noting that the Buffett Foundation report was written by unknown authors and using unnamed sources. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, DR Congo, Howard Buffett, Paul Kagame, rebels, Rwanda, Tony Blair, United Nations

March 21, 2013 | 1:16 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Rwanda: The humanitarian’s dilemma |

: Physicians with the health advocacy group Partners in Health visit with child patients at the hospital they helped build in Butaro, Rwanda; Tom Paulson

Rwanda is a beautiful example of how even the most devastated country can, with enough support and the right kind of planning, make a stunning recovery and get itself on the path of progress.

On many indicators of health and welfare, as well as economic growth, Rwanda is at the top of the list in Africa and, in some cases, globally. I’ve seen the evidence for this in person, having visited and reported on Rwanda more than a year ago. It is an impressive ‘success story’ – a story that gets repeated over and over and over.

But a bizarre juxtaposition of events that took place this week illustrates, for some anyway, the dilemma that Rwanda poses for the humanitarian community.

: Bosco Ntaganda; Flickr

An alleged war criminal, Bosco Ntaganda, who many believe was fomenting violence in eastern Congo at the direction of the Rwandan government this week sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Rwandan officials, who deny any connection to Ntaganda, nevertheless had to promise the U.S. ambassador they’d allow the warlord to be extradited.

Days before that, late last week, Rwanda’s Minister of Health Agnes Binagwaho was celebrated at a big global health meeting in Washington, DC, for her country’s rapid progress against poverty and injustice. Twitter went nuts with people referring to Binagwaho as “inspiring, amazing” – a veritable “rock star” for the aid and development community.

You can argue, as some did with me, that trying to link these two events together is unjustified and misleading.

Yet you could also argue they are fairly difficult to de-link — in that foreign aid is a big reason for Rwanda’s celebrated success in health and threatening to withhold foreign aid is how the US government, the Brits and others have been trying to encourage Rwanda to stop messing around in Congo. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, Agnes Binawagho, Bosco Ntaganda, Congo, health, human rights, Laura Seay, Partners in Health, Paul Kagame, Peter Drobac, Rwanda

January 18, 2013 | 12:09 PM | By Tom Murphy |

Tony Blair’s odd poster child for advancing good African governance |

: Tony Blair and Paul Kagame

Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair wants to end aid dependence by fostering better governance, especially in Africa.

Since moving off the geopolitical center stage, Blair has inserted himself into several new supporting roles that could generally be lumped together as world betterment consultant.

For one such role, there is Blair’s African Governance Initiative. One of his shining examples of good African governance is Rwandan President Paul Kagame — a leader widely credited with reviving Rwanda’s economy over the past 15-plus years and building up strong domestic institutions. Unfortunately, Kagame is also increasingly becoming widely ‘celebrated’ for fueling warfare in neighboring DR Congo, acting like a dictator at home and committing various human rights violations.

“At the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), we believe that the developed world has been quick to act against bad leaders, but slow to support good ones,” writes AGI head Kate Gross in the Stanford Social Innovation Review recently. She then proceeds to talk about the work that the AGI has done with Kagame, describing how it has “fundamentally shaped our model.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Africa, development, foreign aid, governance, Paul Kagame, Tony Blair

November 23, 2012 | 2:16 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Orwellian Update on the Rwandan invasion of Congo |

Congo refugees in July, fleeing fighting in the east

The situation around the military conflict in DR Congo is changing (and deteriorating) rapidly following the takeover of the eastern provincial capital city of Goma by rebels known mostly as the M23 earlier this week.

I wanted to provide an update on the news – beginning with this most Orwellian statement yet from the Rwandan government:

Rwanda Calls for International Support to End Rebellion

Wow. You have to hand it to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his colleagues for audacity.

It should be clear to everyone by now that Rwanda is actually running this Congo rebellion. So what better way to confuse things than to stand up and call for an end to the hostilities that you are conducting? It’s straight out of George Orwell’s novel 1984 and capitalizes on the media’s tradition of always reporting the counter-point position — even when all the evidence is to the contrary.

Anyway, Rwanda’s official denials may not be not fooling anybody, but they also don’t appear to be spurring the international community to take a stand and prevent this from expanding into a much bigger conflagration. This is a region quite familiar with massive death and destruction — with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (and neighboring Burundi, we shouldn’t forget) and Congo as the battleground, until 2003, for what some have called Africa’s World War.

Where we’re at with the Rwandan-backed military insurgency in DR Congo:

Rebels have said they intend to take over all of Congo

The rebel army is on the move toward Kinshasa after defeating counter-attack

Tens of thousands are fleeing as health, safety concerns grow

Some background:

The Guardian Who are these rebels and what does this conflict portend?

The BBC Q&A on the M23

FILED UNDER: Justice, Politics, DR Congo, Paul Kagame, Rwanda

November 20, 2012 | 2:00 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Rwandan-backed rebels take Congo city Goma |

A rebel army widely believed to be backed by the Rwandan government has taken over Goma, a city in eastern DR Congo bordering Rwanda. Many are concerned that this action could spark a much larger regional war.

Flickr, Pan-African News Wire

Col. Sultani Makenga of the rebel forces formerly known as M23, now the Congolese Revolutionary Army.

This is a big deal folks. Remember the last time you didn’t pay attention to what was happening in this neck of the woods? Remember that movie, Hotel Rwanda? Rwandan President Paul Kagame is a darling of the west, but he also seems to be backing this illegal military invasion of a neighboring country. How will the world respond? See news reports listed below: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Congo, militias, Paul Kagame, Rwanda, Uganda, United Nations, war

November 17, 2011 | 9:19 AM | By Tom Paulson |

RE:VISITING RWANDA

A chat with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame |

Tom Paulson

Rwanda President Paul Kagame

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is, like his country, very pleasant but enigmatic.

I got a chance to talk with him for two hours today, along with a dozen or so other journalists here on a trip sponsored by the International Reporting Project. Before I get into details, let me say that Kagame is quite charming and personable.

He doesn’t act at all like a war criminal or dictator, which are some of the charges his most strident critics throw at him. Kagame comes off more like a professor, making his points at length, with a chuckle here or some slightly irritable admonishment there.

Still, we had a job to do and tried to get at some of the more critical issues swirling around this architect of an “African success story” – beginning with the perception some have that his government is regarded as authoritarian, stifling of critics and free speech.

“The debate is more outside than here,” Kagame said. “That is not the reality in Rwanda…. Do you believe what you see or not?”

We acknowledged that in our two weeks touring Rwanda, we had seen some pretty amazing signs of progress made in health, education and the economy. Many Rwandans say they believe things are getting better. But economic growth and democracy, as one student at the University of Rwanda told us, are two different things. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Paul Kagame, Rwanda

November 16, 2011 | 8:43 AM | By Tom Paulson |

RE:VISITING RWANDA

Walking the media tightrope in Rwanda |

There are few simple stories in Rwanda.

There are official positions, which are often stated simply and unilaterally. But if you dig deeper, you often find multiple and complex story lines seething just below the surface.

Like the “We are all Rwandans” comment we hear so often.

What this can mean is that the ethnic tension between the Hutus and Tutsis, which spawned the 1994 genocide, persists but is generally taboo to talk about. By some accounts, this sense of ethnic division may even be on the increase due to the current government’s tendency to favor Tutsis.

Tom Paulson

IRP journalists interviewing in northern Rwanda

We are journalists exploring Rwanda through the International Reporting Project. And this is a country notorious in the West for its authoritarian tendency to put journalists in jail, fine them or otherwise punish critical commentary.

Some even end up dead.

That sounds like an easy target for condemnation – which many organizations, like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, do. Yet even this situation is more complex than it sounds.

Rwanda’s media in 1994 played a leading role in promoting, and to some extent even coordinating, the “Hutu Power” slaughter of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi men, women and children. So President Paul Kagame’s Tutsi-dominated government is not too sympathetic to arguments advocating unrestricted media freedoms.

Media independence and freedom of expression has been a lot of what we’ve been talking about – when we’re on the bus between meetings with officials, in private discussions with Rwandans we meet or maybe over beers recuperating from a day of mental exercise.

What’s not clear is how we should best report on it. Our primary host — and fixer — is a local journalist named Fred Mwasa who keeps saying things that make us nervous. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Christopher Kayumba, Fred Mwasa, media, Paul Kagame, Rwanda

November 7, 2011 | 6:00 AM | By Tom Paulson |

RE:VISITING RWANDA

Re:Visiting Rwanda, a closer look at an African success story |

Flickr, extremeboh

Gorillas in the mist. Mass genocide. The movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and maybe coffee.

Those are the things most people say when Ralph Coolman asks them what they know about Rwanda — a tiny central African nation that has had (and is still having) a profound impact on the West’s view of Africa, on the international community’s view of itself and the whole concept of aid and development.

Seattle is connected to Rwanda in a number of ways, beginning with the country’s role as a major producer of high quality coffee beans for Starbucks and Costco. A number of local humanitarian organizations, as well as social enterprise business ventures, are active there.

Coolman, a Seattle man and my neighbor in the Green Lake sub-district of Tangletown, works with a girls’ education project launched there by two exceptional Seattle women, Suzanne Sinegal McGill and Shalisan Foster. It’s called the Rwanda Girls Initiative. I’ll be writing more about that project later.

I’m headed to Rwanda along with a dozen or so other journalists sponsored by the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University. For the next two weeks, I’ll be reporting on the trip and also posting stories on a number of Seattle projects at work there that have helped make Rwanda — despite its horrific recent past history — into what many see as an African success story.

Wikipedia

Rwanda, that little red dot in the middle of Africa