Kagame Tells West: ‘Let Africa Solve Her Problems’

Rwandan President Paul Kagame

By Arinaitwe Rugyendo.

Paul kagame

Rwandan President has alerted the West that the crisis in the eastern DRC is an African problem that can be solved by Africans.

Speaking at a High Level Meeting convened by UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon on Thursday, President Kagame invited delegates to back peace efforts spearheaded by the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).

 “Regional initiatives are key to finding a lasting solution and anyone who wants to help should support them because they are the best option we have.  All that is needed is to support, not supplant, their efforts,” President Kagame said, according to a press statement from State House, in Kigali.

 President Kagame warned against “externalising” the DRC crisis  — blaming external actors for the problem and seeking external solutions — when such an approach “effectively absolves blame from those with primary responsibility”.

 “The many armed groups in the country are the outcome of a complex, long-standing historical reality. Therefore singling out one group out of many is running away from the actual issue.”

 He said Rwanda rejects allegations of involvement in the current mutiny, and warned that solving the crisis will be impossible if the international community continues to define the issue erroneously.

 “A durable solution will clearly come from addressing the real issues of governance in DRC and dealing with the genuine grievances of its citizens, even as efforts to end the current crisis are exerted.”

 President Kagame described as “perplexing” the degree to which the international community focuses on the current mutiny at the expense of the much broader challenges present in the DRC, in the eastern region and beyond.

“The problems in DRC are complex and longstanding, and therefore, applying simplistic or expedient solutions to resolve them, without going to their historical and political roots, will only gloss over them but not deal with them definitively.”

 He revealed that Congolese of Rwandan descent remain targets for rape, torture and murder as a result of their ethnic origin.

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6 thoughts on “Kagame Tells West: ‘Let Africa Solve Her Problems’

  1. He has a point. The DRC is a complex mix of myriads of issues and the real danger here will be or is to simply assume that the M23 rebellion is the root cause of the country’s problems and therefore in believing that their neutralisation will bring eternal peace! Problems are as broad as the DRC is huge.

  2. A stick that hits your co-wife can later be used against you. At the height of the anti-Gaddafi struggle backed by the west, president Kagame is among the few African presidents who justified the campaign amidst opposition calls from his counterparts with the theme, “African solutions for African problems”. Now the odds are aginst him and he’s now desperately calling the west to back off Africa!. Aren’t these double-standards?. The Libyan Crisis would have been solved by the AU by some African presidents like Kagame who were then posturing to be clean blatantly undermined the union’s capacity and even questioned its impartiality in bringing about a lasting solution before the west.

  3. General Kagame,

    Africa cannot solve its problems when it has dictators . It will only be when we have real democracy and democratic institutions that we will be able to solve our problems.

    Lets wake up and talk with mature minds and after very analytical thinking.
    Lets think mature, talk mature, act mature, only then we can solve our problems.

  4. The main issue is to open a political dialogue between rwandans. Kagame must stop lying and must stop also plundering congolese minerals to build up is country.
    Those rwandans who aquired the congolese nationality must obey by the law of the land otherwise they must be deported to their home land even there is not space to accomodate them.

  5. its a pity for Kagame to say that africa can solve its own problems , does he know africa very well 1 . if the famine strikes any part of africa the west always comes in ,2. diseases , poverty ,etc so how will africa solve its own problems please a peace of advice stop destabilising congo you will regrete ,the tusti in congo have lived in congo and other countries in harmony why comes that after museveni and kagame they so many tribal conflicts in congo that could even spread to other countries

  6. but we have always failed to solve our own problems here in africa and some help outside africa is certainly not abad idea mr. president kagame

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