The Foreign Affairs Minister of Rwanda Louise Mushikiwabo has demanded some respect from donor countries that wave their big chequebooks to intimidate Rwanda.
“This child-to-parent relationship has to end.There has to be a minimum respect,” Mushikiwabo said Saturday in an address to a Kenyan business club called Mindspeak.
She said, “As long as countries wave chequebooks over our heads, we can never be equal.”
Mushikiwabo added that Africans have to work hard to develop their economies in order to stop relying on western donors.
Minister Mushikiwabo said it was too early to tell what kind of damage the withholding of aid would do to the government’s economic development push.
“We have been in much worse situations than dollars being withheld from us,” she said.
German has also (Saturday) canceled its planned aid budget of US$26 Million in contributions to Rwanda’s budget planned from this year through 2015.
The UK also terminated US$25m financial support to Rwanda saying in a statement that it was delaying in budget support due July 2012 while considering whether aid conditions had been met.
Earlier, US government had blocked $200,000 in military aid to Rwanda and the Netherlands suspended 5 million euros of aid after a United Nations interim report said Rwanda was backing rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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