Wednesday 28 August 2013

President Paul Kagame Speaks on Market Competition



“Competition is good for everybody…. Competition helps bring out everybody’s potential… and be able to move forward. And it doesn’t matter what level of society; even the poor people have that energy, deserve that freedom where they can be able to compete with the rest and do the best they can, and be able to move forward on that.” – President Paul Kagame, Rwanda


Paul Kagame was sworn in as President of the Republic of Rwanda for a seven-year term on September 12, 2003 after being elected in Rwanda’s first democratically contested multiparty elections. He was re-elected to a second term in 2010, buoyed by years of strong economic growth. Under his leadership, Rwanda has streamlined the process for starting businesses and emphasized free trade, the rule of law and entrepreneurship while de-emphasizing the role of foreign aid.


President Kagame was born in 1957 in Ruhango, Southern Province, Rwanda, and in 1960 he and his family fled the ethnic persecution of Tutsis that was to characterize Rwanda in subsequent decades. Growing up as a refugee in Uganda, Kagame was among the first 27 men who, together with Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, launched a liberation war in Uganda that eventually deposed dictator Idi Amin Dada, whose regime is estimated to have killed between 100,000 and half a million citizens.


President Kagame served as a senior officer in the Ugandan army between 1986 and 1990, during which time he attended a staff and command course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.


In October 1990, the Rwandan government initiated a genocide that eventually claimed close to a million Tutsi lives. In the midst of this and after a thirty year exile, Kagame led a guerilla army back into his native country and ended the genocide 100 days after it began. Although some international observers expected Kagame’s Tutsi army to begin systematic revenge killings against the Hutu majority, Kagame and his fellow army leaders encouraged a path to reconciliation. In July 1994, he was appointed Vice-President and Minister for Defense in the Government of National Unity, which contained both Hutu and Tutsi.


In 1998, President Paul Kagame was elected Chairman of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a partner in the Government of National Unity. On 17 April 2000, he was elected President of the Republic of Rwanda by the Transitional National Assembly. He took the Oath of Office April 22, 2000. Today, under the Kagame administration, it is illegal for Rwandans to speak or write in a way that encourages Rwandans to identify each other in terms of Tutsi and Hutu.


President Kagame was awarded the 2003 Global Leadership Award by the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), in recognition of his role in uniting and reconciling Rwandans and in promoting peaceful solutions to the conflicts in the region.


In July 2003, President Kagame was elected 1st Vice President of the African Union during the African Union Heads of State and Government Summit held in Maputo, Mozambique.


In September 2005, President Kagame was awarded the Andrew Young Medal for Capitalism and Social Progress by Georgia State University; and in the same month received the African National Achievement Award by the Africa America Institute. In 2006 and in 2007, he was presented the ICT Africa Award, which recognizes organizations and individuals that have demonstrated excellence in promoting the use of ICTs for the overall development of the African continent.


President Kagame also was the recipient of the 2007 African Gender Award presented by Femmes Africa Solidarité in recognition of outstanding achievement in furthering gender mainstreaming in the economic and political spheres, as well as addressing social and cultural barriers that impede the involvement and advancement of women in national affairs



President Paul Kagame Speaks on Market Competition

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