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  • Kagame Successfully Built Modern Institutions on Traditional Values

    Critics of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame say that he foments the war in Eastern Congo and suppresses opposition parties at home. These views prosper in the absence of facts.

    The government of Rwanda has been accused of cracking down on so-called opposition newspapers.

    On April 13, 2010, the government issued six-month suspensions to two Kinyarwanda-language newspapers, Umuvugizi and Umuseso, for publishing language such as the following:

    “He who refuses a peaceful political revolution makes a bloody revolution.” (Umuseso)

    These words reflected reality on Feb. 19 and March 4 of that year, when terrorists threw grenades into public establishments in Kigali and killed innocent civilians.

    Rwanda knows a lot about freedom of speech and the role of the press. After all, the Hutu Power press helped ignite the 1994 genocide.

    Today, Rwanda is a different place: growth has averaged almost 8 percent over the last decade, wages have increased by 30% in the key export sectors, street crime is almost unknown and corruption measures among the lowest in Africa.

    Two weeks ago, Rwanda was named the third most competitive economy in all of Africa, after South Africa and Mauritius.

    The secret to Rwanda’s success is that Kagame has built modern institutions on traditional values. In the aftermath of the genocide, modern courts were incapable of handling the hundreds of thousands of perpetrators.

    International legal advisers were flummoxed. Kagame introduced the traditional Gacaca system to give the perpetrators of the genocide the opportunity to tell the truth and ask the community for forgiveness.

    The National University of Rwanda found that 95% of the survivors and even 80% of the detainees viewed the system as more efficient than any other form of justice.

    Kagame’s team rewrote the constitution such that his party could not have more than 50% of the seats in parliament. Though Kagame is from one ethnic group, his prime minister and 70% of his cabinet are from the other.

    A world-leading 56% 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.

    According to Gallup, 95% of Rwandans are confident in their national government.

    77% of Rwandans are satisfied with their freedom of expression, belief, association and personal autonomy, and the same percentage considers their local area to be a good place for ethnic and racial minorities.

    Confidence in the military and the judiciary is high, with approval ratings of 98% and 84%, respectively. And 86% of Rwandans believe the electoral process is fair and honest.

    Rwanda now invests in biotech, software and communications. Young, highly qualified members of the Rwandan Diaspora are returning in droves; remittances from the same, knowledgeable Diaspora communities in northern Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States defy gravity and may be as much as US$1 billion per year.

    Global leaders like Nestlé and Marriott are making huge investments in human capacity, plant and equipment.

    This isn’t an authoritarian regime; it is just a poor, confident nation that defies conventional Western categories, and has found its own voice.

    The Author is Co-Founder of the SEVEN Fund, a philanthropic foundation in Cambridge, Mass.

  • Woman Refuses to Return to Violent Husband

    After being burnt on the face with boiled oil Dusabumuremyi Budensiyana has said she will never return to her husband insisting on the fact that her husband has committed serious violence against her.

    On 6th August 2012, Budensiyana faced serious injuries, after her husband Bizimungu Joseph poured boiled oil onto her face, thanks to Good neighbour foundation who helped her to get treatments.

    Her face has healed though still with signs of injuries.

    Since then Bizimungu fled the country.

    However, His family was arrested in order to find out whether there is any compliance with Bizimungu during such violence.

    Budensiyana calls upon community leaders to actively fight against such domestic violence urging families to report their family problems before becoming uncontrolled issues.

  • EAC Sec. General in Dialogue With Development Partners

    The Secretary General of the East African Community Amb. Dr. Richard Sezibera September 19 held a high level dialogue with the Heads of Missions of the Development Partners accredited to the regional bloc and to the United Republic of Tanzania at the Dar es Salaam Serena Hotel.

    Amb. Sezibera reaffirmed the Community’s great faith in the pivotal and catalytic role of the Development Partners, particularly through the EAC Partnership Fund in the development of the regional programme.

    He informed the ambassadors that the performance of the Partnership Fund for the FY 2011/2012 reflects significant impact on the overall regional programme and that the Fund’s contribution which rose from US$ 640,920 in 2006/07 to US$ 6.1 Million in 2011/12 was effectively applied to the implementation of the earmarked projects in the critical areas of the Common Market, Customs and Trade.

    It was also used in negotiations of the East African Monetary Union; sensitization and outreach; and support to key EAC sectors (including education, culture and labour; gender and community development; governance, agriculture and tourism; infrastructure development; and capacity strengthening of the EAC.

    The Secretary General briefed the Development Partners on the current status of the regional integration process that touched on all the pillars of the integration including the possible expansion of the Community.

    Amb. Sezibera discolsed that the resource requirements to deliver the 4th EAC Development Strategy were in the region of US$ 1.3 billion over the 5-year period of the Strategy and that it was important to bring on board the Development Partners in the resouce mobilization.

    He said the efforts and milestones so far being made with steady growth of intra-EAC trade and international trade as well as direct foreign investments inflows and the momentum gathered for the social and economic transformation of East Africa should be maintained and requires massive effort to marshal the resources and contribution of the public and private sectors, civil society and the development partners in the regional integration and development effort.

    At the dialogue, the British High Commissioner to the United Republic of Tanzania H.E Diane Corner took over the Chair of the EAC Development Partners (Partnership Fund) from H.E. Amb. Klaus Peter Brandes of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in the United Republic of Tanzania.

    In his handover remarks, the German Ambassador, who was represented by Ms. Gisela Habel, the Head of Cooperation at the Embassy reaffirmed the commitment of the Development Partners in the regional integration process.

    The Ambassador congratulated the Secretary General for spearheading the regional integration process with commendable results and noted that the concept paper for the high level dialogue that had been developed will underpin exchange of information and deepen dialogue between EAC and the Development Partners in order to jointly support the achievement of the Customs Union, the Common Market, the Monetary Union, and eventually the Political Federation.

    The German Ambassador noted that EAC was a vibrant regional economic community on the continent and as such there was need to secure continuous engagement of Development Partners in the support of regional integration.

    “Development Partners had a fair interest in seeing their financial contributions bear fruit through closer integration, and the creation of a conducive environment for economic development supported by stability, peace and security in the region”.

    The British High Commissioner HE Diane Corner highlighted the outstanding progress in the EAC integration that include the significant increase in intra-regional trade since 2005; monetary union and political federation being high on the agenda; the move to establish a Tripartite Free Trade Area involving the EAC, SADC, and COMESA by 2014; as well as the Continental FTA by 2017 as adopted by the African Union.

    Ms. Diane Corner noted that all these were ambitious goals that signal significant political backing to push regional integration higher up the agenda.

    The British Envoy affirmed that the UK remains committed to support the regional agenda through UK’s Africa Free Trade Initiative, which supports a wide range of trade facilitation initiatives across Africa.

    Ms. Corner cautioned the Community on the use of funds from the Development Fund saying “there is much greater scrutiny and challenge around the use of taxpayers money for aid programmes these days and for this reason, we are plaesed that the Secretary General has introduced, and will continue to pursue, much greater focus on results within EAC programmes and a heavy empasis on value for money”.

    The EAC Secretariat and the Development Partners signed a formal agreement on a regular High Level Dialogue. The Secretary General Amb. Dr. Richard Sezibera signed on behalf of the EAC while the current Chair of the Development Partners Her Excellency Diane Corner, the British High Commissioner to the United Republic of Tanzania signed on behalf of the Development Partners.

    The EAC Partnership Fund was established in September 2006, as a basket pool to enhance donor coordination in support to the regional projects and programmes through the EAC Secretariat.

    The main objective of the Fund is to enhance regional integration and socio-economic development of the EAC and facilitate harmonization and alignment of Development Partner’s support to EAC.

  • Kinyinya Residents Want ‘Irondo’ Fees Reduced

    Residents of Gasharu cell in Kinyinya sector Gasabo District have called on their community leaders to reduce amount of money paid for night patrol accusing community night watchers for not ensuring their security during night hours.

    Each family pays Frw1000 per month and residents want this amount to be reduced to Frw500.

    On condition of anonymity, one of residents told IGIHE journalist that he will not pay Frw1000 until community leaders declare a reduction of this amount.

    He added that thieves have robbed his house three times in the month of August accusing night watchers in the cell to be among those thieves.

    However, until now no one among night watchers was arrested because of stealing during night hours.

    Rutazana Eric is in charge of collecting money from households in Gasharu cell. He said most of citizens do not pay irondo fees urging them to be committed to their monthly contribution to facilitate night watchers payment.

    The same as Mugemangango Claude who is in charge of security in Gasharu cell said that residents are not forced to pay that amount of money however, reminded Claude, Citizens should know it is their duty to pay night watchers.

    Responding to a question about fees reduction, Claude said, “the money will be reduced depending on category of resident and no one’s rights will be undermined.”

    Currently, Kinyinya sector and its citizens have bought a night patrol car which serves for security reasons.

    It was named: “Kinyinya Irondo patrol car” something which is new around Kigali city.

  • Document From Egypt Reveals Jesus Was Married

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    An ancient scrap of papyrus makes explicit reference to Jesus having a wife, according to a renowned expert in Christian history.

    Harvard divinity professor Karen King unveiled the 4th-Century Coptic script at a conference in Rome.

    She said researchers had identified the words “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife’”, which might refer to Mary Magdalene.

    Christian tradition holds that Jesus did not marry – but Ms King said in early years it was subject to debate.

    The provocative find could spark debate over celibacy and the role of women within Christianity, she added.

    But the announcement sparked scepticism from some theologians.

    Jim West, a professor and Baptist pastor in Tennessee, said: “A statement on a papyrus fragment isn’t proof of anything. It’s nothing more than a statement ‘in thin air’, without substantial context.”

    Wolf-Peter Funk, a noted Coptic linguist attending the same conference as Ms King, said there were “thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things,” and many questions remained about the fragment.

    ‘Worthy disciple’
    Ms King said the document, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, is the first known scripture in which Jesus is reported to cite his wife.

    She said the 4th-Century text was a copy of a gospel, probably written in Greek in the 2nd Century.

    She said initially she was sceptical about the yellowish brown papyrus, and started from the notion that it was a forgery – but that she quickly decided it was genuine.

    Several other experts agreed, she said, but the “final judgment on the fragment depends on further examination by colleagues and further testing, especially of the chemical composition of the ink”.

    Ms King said the script was not proof of Jesus’s marital status.

    “It is not evidence, for us, historically, that Jesus had a wife,” she said.

    “It’s quite clear evidence, in fact, that some Christians, probably in the second half of the 2nd Century, thought that Jesus had a wife.”

    Ms King said it revealed the concerns of early Christians with regards to family and marriage matters.

    “From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus’s death before they began appealing to Jesus’s marital status to support their positions.

    “What this shows is that there were early Christians for whom sexual union in marriage could be an imitation of God’s creativity and generativity and it could be spiritually proper and appropriate.”

    Bible scholar Ben Witherington III, a professor in Kentucky, said the term “wife” might simply refer to a female domestic assistant and follower.

    Private owner
    According to Ms King’s research team, the text also quotes Jesus as telling his followers that Mary Magdalene is worthy of being his disciple.

    This, in turn, casts new doubt on the long-held belief that Jesus had no female disciples, and raises issues about Mary’s biblical role as a sinner, the researchers said.

    Ms King presented the document at a six-day conference held at Rome’s La Sapienza University and at the Augustinianum institute of the Pontifical Lateran University.

    The faded papyrus is hardly bigger than a business card and has eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass.

    The private collector, who owns the fragment, has asked to remain anonymous because “he doesn’t want to be hounded by people who want to buy this”, Ms King said.

    She said he had contacted Ms King to help translate and analyse it.

    Nothing was known about the circumstances of its discovery, but because of the script used she had concluded it must have come from Egypt.

    BBC

  • Smugglers Intercepted with 2000Kgs of Minerals

    Police in Nyamasheke district on September 17, arrested Habyarimana Anicet, a driver of Fuso truck RAB 703 Z carrying 2040Kgs of smuggled minerals, Tin and Coltan.

    Habyarimana, aged 31 was arrested with his colleague Musabyimana Innocent both residents of Nyamasheke and Rusizi Districts respectively.

    They are being held at Ruharambuga Police station in Nyamasheke district. The smuggled minerals belonged to Gaferege Daniel.

    The minerals were being transported to Kigali before being intercepted on a road Police check point on Rusizi-Kigali highway.

    According to Rwanda National Police (RNP) sources in Nyamasheke District, the minerals are reported to be owned by Gakwerere Company which has operations in Rusizi and Nyamasheke districts but by the time of the arrest, the duo are suspected to have been using forged documents to transport and trade the minerals.

    They are reported to have been trying to evade taxes because they had no valid documents to allow them transport the minerals to Kigali.

    On September 16, Police in Nyamasheke District also noted that five cases of fraud and other forms of illegal trade have been registered during last few days.

    Another case of smuggled minerals was reported in Nyamagabe district where a vehicle carrying about 1900 kilogrammes of cassiterite was intercepted by Rwanda National Police in Revenue Protection Unit.

  • Man killed Wife, Cooked Her Body

    An American Chef on trial for the murder of his wife told investigators that he disposed of her body by boiling it for four days then trashed the remains with other waste in a grease pit in his restaurant.

    David Viens, 49 in Los Angeles, was a chef at the Thyme Contemporary Café in Lomita, Calif., when on Oct. 18, 2009 he came home and argued with his 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens.

    At one point he duct-taped her mouth and bound her hands and feet before falling asleep and finding her corpse the next morning, he told investigators.

    “I woke up. I panicked,” Viens said. “She was hard.”

    On Tuesday a jury in L.A. heard that Viens told investigators that in a panic he stuffed his wife’s body face-down into a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and proceeded to cook it for four days.

    He said that he used weights to submerge Dawn’s 105-pound body in the boiling water.

    “I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” he told investigators.

    Viens then took some of his wife’s body’s remains, mixed it with other waste from the restaurant and poured it into the grease pit at the Thyme Contemporary Café. Other remains were placed in the dumpster in garbage bags.

    He said that afterwards all he saved was his wife’s skull, though a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

    “That’s the only thing I didn’t want to get rid of in case I wanted to leave it somewhere,” he told police of the skull, saying that he left in “my mother’s attic.”

    It wasn’t until 2011 that Viens learned that police investigating Dawn’s disappearance began to suspect him. At that point he leapt feet-first from an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. He survived the fall and is now in a wheelchair.

    Viens sat in the courtroom staring ahead and scribbling notes as a stunned-looking jury listened to the 2011 taped hospital bed confession to police.

    What Viens says in the taped interviews closely matches what he told his daughter and a former girlfriend, both of whom have testified for the prosecution.

    Details of exactly what occurred between David and Dawn Viens that night in October 2009 remain unclear.

    Viens told police that he and his wife had eaten at a California Pizza Kitchen before he did some work at the restaurant and then went out with friends. When he arrived back home, he said, the couple began to fight.

    In one interview Viens said that he and his wife had argued after he accused her of stealing money from their restaurant.

    In a later interview, he said that the couple had taken cocaine, and in yet another interview he said she was bothering him while he was trying to sleep.

    Viens told police that he had previously taped her up to prevent her from “driving around wasted, whacked out on coke and drinking.”

    “For some reason I just got violent,” Veins said.

    ABCnews

  • Rwandan High Commissioner to Kenya Presents Credentials to President Kibaki

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    The Rwandan High Commissioner to Kenya her Excellency Yamina karitanyi has presented her credentials to the Kenyan President His Excellency Mwai Kibaki at state house in Nairobi.

    High Commissioner Karitanyi replaces George Kayonga. She presented her credentials accompanied by the First Counsellor Mr. Ephreim Murenzi and the First Secretary Gerald Mbanda.

    During the ceremony, High commissioner karitanyi informed President Kibaki that The government and the people of Rwanda treasure the existing warm relations between the two countries.

    She said she will endeavor promoting the existing good relations and active bilateral cooperation between Rwanda and Kenya strengthening the excellent solidarity and friendship, among the people of the two countries.

    The government of Rwanda remains firmly committed to bringing and maintaining peace and regional stability, and in this regard, Rwanda will continue to play a leading role in the East African Standby Force, and also support regional initiatives aimed at enhancing peace, integration and development; the new High Commissioner emphasized.

    High Commissioner Karitanyi thanked President Kibaki and his government for the role played in regional integration, noting the encouraging progress of the Customs Union and Common market Protocol which underscores the serious determination of the East African leadership and citizens to construct a powerful and sustainable East African political and economic block.

    President Kibaki informed the new High commissioner and her delegation, that he is happy to be working with the government of Rwanda as one of Kenya’s strategic partners noting that already a lot has been achieved in various areas of cooperation.

  • British Council Rwanda Launches Directorate

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    The British Council has launched their Rwanda Directorate. The council is the UK’s International Cultural relations body which was granted directorate status in Rwanda in November 2011.

    Michael Bibby, British Council’s country Director says, “we are very excited about the fact that we can now plan for our work in Rwanda for many years to come.”

    He noted, “We can be part of the remarkable development plan that Rwanda is seeing, and that we can ensure that teachers and learners have access to the best in education resource, and English language materials, from the UK.”

    The British Council in Rwanda works to provide support for and build capacity in the Ministry of Education, Rwanda Education Board and its departments, particularly helping to manage the change French to English as the language of Instruction.

    It provides training courses for teachers, teacher Educators and others whose work connected to education in Rwanda and offers training in both English language skills appropriate for classroom and teacher development courses focusing on learner-centered methodologies and strategies for teaching English.

    The British council says it has a range of Radio Programs aimed at supporting learners of English in an engaging, educational and fun way by working with local and national radio stations to provide these learning opportunities.

    Over 1000 solar powered radios have been distributed to aid teachers in accessing various data while teaching English.

    The British Council works with governments and ministries to develop English Language skills and conduct research into importance of English language skills for developing countries.
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  • Citizens Need More Skills on Agro Forestry

    The Director of Forestry Field Programs Unit at NAFA, Dismas Bakundukize has said felling trees for firewood, human activities and lack of skills on agro forestry plantations among citizens are a big challenge to agro forestry development in Rwanda.

    Bakundukize urged citizen to put more commitment on the increase of these species adding that there those who will benefit from them.

    Currently, the forestry coverage in general stands at about 24% of National territory.

    Among this 24% of coverage, agro forestry species occupy 285.046,9 ha which means 10,8% of the total coverage.

    ” The different between agro forestry species and classis forest is that they differ from distance you put between one tree to another.

    Agoforestry distance is longer than distance in classic forests.” Bakundukize said.

    He added that depending on their nature, the composition of leaves and branches of these species contribute to the fertilization of soil.

    Bakundukize further explains that these species are major contributors in fighting against soil erosion.

    Economically, the Director highlighted the significant role of agroforestry species in improving socio economic condition among citizens.

    “Apart from being a source of firewood, agro forestry species can be used once you want construction materials like timber, fruits and vegetables which can be sent to national and international market.” Bakundukize noted.

    Despite the small amount of money allocated to forestry sector, ongoing programs are positively impacting on the increase of national agro forestry coverage.