Perezida Donald Trump w’Amerika yiyemeje guhangana n’abanyagitugu bo muri Afurika ahereye kuri Paul Kagame!

Kuva kuri uyu wa mbere taliki ya 23 Mutarama 2017, abanyarwanda bakomeje gutangazwa cyane n’ubwoba budasanzwe buri kugaragazwa na Paul Kagame ! Ubwo bwoba bukaba bugaragazwa n’uko Paul Kagame ubwe yavuze ko Padiri Nahimana Thomas nta mpamvu nimwe igomba kumubuza kujya mu gihugu cye cy’u Rwanda n’ubwo nta bya ngombwa yaba afite by’u Rwanda, ariko kuri uyu wa mbere taliki ya 23 Mutarama 2017, Nahimana Thomas akaba yarabujijwe kwinjira mu ndenge ya SN brussels yagombaga ku mugeza mu Rwanda, ibyo bikaba byaratewe n’ibaruwa ya Kigali yandikiwe amakompanyi y’indege zose ko atagomba gutwara Nahimana amugeza mu Rwanda, abantu benshi baruwime !


Kuri uyu wa mbere taliki ya 23 Mutarama 2017 ibiro bishinzwe abinjira n’abasohoka mu Rwanda byatanze inkuru y’uko Padiri Nahimana wagombaga gufata indege ya SN Brussels imugeza i Kigali, ahawe ikaze mu Rwanda. Ku gicamunsi cy’uwo munsi nibwo ambasaderi wa Paul Kagame mu Bubiligi yanditse ku rubuga rwa facebook ko Nahimana Thomana wagombaga kuza mu Rwanda azanywe n’indege ya KLM atariko bimeze, ko ahubwo Nahimana yagombaga kuza n’indege ya SN Brussels ivuye mu Bubiligi, iyo ndege nayo ikaba yamusize kuko atujuje ibyangombwa bimwemerera kujya mu Rwanda ! Padiri Thomas Nahimana, asobanura ko indege ya KLM bayibujije kumutwara nawe agahita afata indi ya SN Brussels, mu gihe yajya kuyinjiramo bakaba baramweretse ibaruwa yanditswe na Kigali ko atemerewe kujya mu Rwanda ! Ese ni ari uko bimeze, Paul Kagame aracyafite ijambo mu gihugu cyangwa hari ikibyihishe inyuma ?

Paul Kagame si ubwa mbere abeshya, ubwo yarahiraga akabeshya isi yose ko ataziyamamariza manda ya gatatu, Paul Kagame yabwiye abanyamakuru ngo nibamurebe mu maso ngo ntabwo ari umuntu wo kwiyamamariza manda ya gatatu ! Ubu se bimeze bite ? umuntu nkuwo se niwe wagira isoni zo kubeshya Padiri Nahimana ngo amwemereye ko azaza mu Rwanda nta nkomyi kandi atari byo? Paul Kagame ntagira isoni ; ubwo umwami KigeliV yatabarukaga ; hakemezwa ko umugogo we uzashyingurwa mu Rwanda, Kagame yakoze uko ashoboye kugirango uwo mugogo uzashyingurwe atawurebyeho n’amaso ye kandi uwo mwami ari uwo mu murwango we ! Umugogo wa Kigeli, ukigezwa mu Rwanda Kagame yahise afata gahunda yo kujya mu gihugu cy’Ubuhinde, mu gihe cyo ku wutabariza (kuwushyingura) Paul Kagame yagiye mu nama ihuza ibihugu by’Afurika n’Ubufaransa, murumva uwo Kagame, hari ukundi kuri yari kubwira Padiri Nahimana koko ?

Kubera ibyo binyoma yakomeje gukwiza isi yose, byabaye ngombwa ko abanyamerika bamushingiye igiti, bagera ubwo bamukuraho amaboko kubera kubabeshya! Ishyaka ry’abademocrate ryayoborwaga n’umuryango wa Bill Clinton, akaba ari naryo ririmo abantu benshi basangiye na Kagame amabanga menshi y’ubugizi bwa nabi, ryatsinzwe na Donald Trump ritangiye kumuha akato. Kuva ku italiki ya 20 Mutarama 2017, Donald Trump akaba ariwe uyobora ku mugaragaro igihugu cya Leta Zunze Ubumwe z’Amerika. Ubu Kagame akaba afite ubwoba bw’uko uwamurwanya wese akoresheje intwaro cyangwa ubundi buryo yahita amustsinda kuko nta nkunga y’abanyamerika ashobora kubona nk’uko yayihabwaga mu bihe byashize ! Kagame akaba rero atakwiyemeza guhangana na padiri Nahimana Thomas ufite ubwenegihugu bw’igihugu cy’Ubufaransa ! Niba se Kagame atinya Thomas Nahimana kandi ari umunyarwanda w’umwirabura, Kagame azatinyuka gufunga gute aba jenerali bo mu ngabo z’igihugu cy’Ubufaransa b’abazungu bari muri « turquoise ? » mu Rwanda ashinja gukora jenoside!

Kuri uyu wa Kabiri taliki ya 24 Mutarama 2017, Perezida wa leta zunze ubumwe z’Amerika (USA) Donald Trump yarushijeho gutera ubwo Paul Kagame, kuko Trump yiyemeje kwiyandikira ubwe umugambi afitiye Paul Kagame ! Ku rukuta rwe rwa twitter, Donald Trump yagize ati : « Nkuko nabibabwiye kenshi, ku banyagitugu bo muri Afurika duhereye kuri Kagame, Museveni na Mugabe kimwe n’abandi bose, ndababwiza ukuri ko igihe cyabo kigeze, nkaba mbasaba kumpa iminsi micye gusa ! »

Iyi mvugo ya Perezida Donald Trump ikaba ituma Kagame atagitora agatotsi kandi koko igihe cye kirageze kuko « uwicishije inkota nawe azicishwa indi » Paul Kagame ntabwo azakurwa ku butegetsi na demokarasi, hagomba gukoreshwa imbaraga nk’uko nawe yazikoresheje kugirango afate ubwo butegetsi ! Abamukingiraga ikibaba muri Amerika bagiye ku ruhande, Kagame arabona iminsi ye ibaze, ntabwo rero muri ibi bihe bimukomeranye aribwo yakwemera ko Padiri Nahimana Thomas ajya mu Rwanda kugira ngo nawe ahagurutse abanyarwanda bashobore kurwanira uburenganzira bwabo !



Paul Kagame asanga gufungura urubuga rwa politiki mu Rwanda ari urupfu kuri we ariko kandi kurufunga nabyo biganisha ku rupfu kuriwe ! Ibi akaba aribyo bita mu kinyarwanda : « kuba hagati nk’agati ko mu ruzi » ! None se Paul Kagame azabwira Trump ko ari umuyobozi mwiza kuko adakunda demokarasi ari akaba yarubatse « Kigali Convention Center » idafite aho ihuriye na «Trump City»? Nkuko bivugwa muri Bibiliya, ntacyo byaba bimaze kugira ubutunzi bw’isi yose ariko ukamburwa ubuzima ! Bimariye iki abanyarwanda kubona hari imiturirwa iri ku bakwa i Kigali ariko imirambo yabo igahora yerera mu kiyaga cya Rweru abandi bicwa n’inzara ? Kagame niwe wenyine wasobanura icyo iryo terambere risobanura kubanyarwanda !

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Ubwanditsi wa VeritasInfo.

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OLD STRATEGIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY COLD WAR: Vladimir Putin, Bashar-al-Assad, Tayyip Erdogan vs. NATO/USA

Rwandan American lawyer and former National University of Rwanda professor Dr. Charles Kambanda

Whether one calls it "another round of the cold war" or "a continuum of the cold war", the NATO/US vs China/Russia axis relationship bears all the chilly characteristics the cold war. The most bloody cold war front line so far is Syria, not to ignore Burundi.

December 2015, Turkey conspired with its NATO allies to down Russia's fighter jet. It's not in dispute now that Turkey downed the Russian fighter jet from Syria as Russia was fighting to " liberate" Syria from NATO and their proxy Syrian " rebels". President Vladimir Putin responded to Turkey's act of downing the Russian fighter jet by (a) imposing punitive economic sanctions against Turkey and (b) promising that Turkey and its European allies would pay the price for downing the Russian fighter jet. That was then!

Today, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan met his counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, in what many analysts rightly call a diplomatic reset. The two leaders met to " talk business" after Erdogan apologized to Putin for the NATO/US wrong advice that led Turkey to down Russia's fighter jet. Putin accepted the apology "for the good of the two nations"; Turkey and Russia.

Erdogan believes that while he was working with NATO/US for regime change in Syria, NATO/US were planning his own downfall through a Coup which Erdogan claims to have defeated.
Turkey is strategic for NATO/US cold warfare. Analysts argue that without Turkey's full cooperation, given Germany's cold feet in the current cold war, NATO cannot do much. The war in Syria stands in a balance for NATO and the US. If Turkey joins Russia, Syria could as well fall to Russia. Whether Russia can keep both Bashar-al-Assad ( Syria) and Tayyip Erdogab ( Turkey) in power against NATO/US interests is another complex issue which dwells mostly on strategies and tactics the major cold war protagonists contemplate.

If Russia consolidated power in Turkey and Syria, thereby defeating NATO /US in Syria, would NATO /US concede defeats in Syria and talk peace with Assad? If NATO/US talked peace with Assad, what would be the fate for NATO/US sponsored rebels in Syrian? Would sending the NATO/US sponsored rebels to the International Criminal Court be one of the possibilities if NATO/US struck a deal with Assad? If NATO/US chose to fight on, would NATO/US consider supporting " rebels" in Turkey thereby opening another cold war front line; taking on Putin and Erdogan even before NATO/US are done with Putin and Assad in Syria? Will Turkey pull out of NATO? What's the future of NATO as a cold war mentality " union"?

On June 7th, 2016, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the world by surprise when he " commended" President Putin's efforts to bring peace in Syria. Netanyahu's shocking comments came shortly before he visited President Putin for a third time in less that a year. Will Israel be a spectator in this crazy regional " re-positioning" game? Would Israel strike an independent deal with Putin, Erdogan and Assad ? Where would such a deal leave Israel/NATO/US relationship?

Will the cold war battle in Africa - Burundi - intensify or the superpowers will abandon the Burundi front line for future complex cold war tactics and strategies? Do the ordinary people who perish and/or bear the inhumane effects of these senseless wars between superpowers matter ?

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Kagame Is Laughing All The Way To The Bank

Kigali Convention Centre (KCC) is finally here! Congratulations to all those involved in building it since 2008. It has been a long journey.

But like everything else in Kagame's Kingdom there is a dark side - CASH!
While we were sleeping KCC mysteriously got new owners. Guess who are the owners:

The new owners include Prime Holdings and Crystal Ventures. This should come as a shock!
Back in 2006, the Kagame regime assured the IMF that Prime Holdings had ceased to manage public assets after it was caught stealing. Prime Holdings is a shadowy company that was unable to account for funds used to build the current Serena Hotel in Kigali and Gisenyi! Ten years later, the corrupt mafia-like Prime Holdings is back!

Evidently Kagame has rewarded Prime Holdings with an even bigger cake - big money from the US$400 million Eurobond the Kagame regime borrowed to build KCC among other things!
So why did Kagame bring back the thieving Prime Holdings? The same reason Crystal Ventures became a co-owner of KCC. To siphon off CASH!

We hope the IMF is observing this ugly drama that is hidden away by the celebrations around the KCC.




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David Himbara

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War Criminal Paul Kagame of Rwanda

When Rwandan-backed rebels recently took Goma, the biggest city in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Paul Kagame had every reason to think the world would give him a pass. That, after all, has been the pattern for years.

Frequently lauded by people such as Bono, Tony Blair, and Pastor Rick, the Rwandan president enjoys some extraordinary backing in the West—support that is particularly remarkable given his alleged hand in ongoing regional conflicts believed to have killed more than 5 million people since the mid-’90s.

War criminal Paul Kagame of Rwanda

On the aid and awards circuit, Kagame is known as the man who led Rwanda from the ashes of the 1994 genocide—one of the late 20th century’s greatest atrocities—to hope and prosperity: a land of fast growth and rare good economic governance with enviable advances in health care, education, and women’s rights. Bestowing his foundation’s Global Citizen Award on Kagame three years ago, Bill Clinton said: “From crisis, President Kagame has forged a strong, unified, and growing nation with the potential to become a model for the rest of Africa and the world.”
But that model narrative seems to be shifting in the aftermath of the Goma takeover. After a United Nations report found that Rwanda created and commands the rebel group known as M23, important European friends such as Britain and Belgium partially suspended aid donations to Rwanda, and President Obama called Kagame to warn him against any continued military adventurism.
Leading observers say the reevaluation of Kagame and his legacy is long overdue. Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian scholar whom many consider the world’s foremost expert on Rwanda, describes Kagame as “probably the worst war criminal in office today.” In an interview, Reyntjens told me that Kagame’s crimes rank with those perpetrated by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Washington and London have long supported Kagame as a bulwark of stability in a volatile region. But a recent U.N. report accused his government of instigating trouble across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Meanwhile, specialists in African affairs say a regime like Kagame’s, an ethnic dictatorship built along unusually narrow lines, represents a political dead end. And international human-rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have raised serious questions about violence committed against journalists and opposition figures. Kagame has generally been dismissive of such accusations of abuse.

Tall, gaunt, and almost professorial in manner, Kagame cuts an unusual figure for a former African guerrilla leader. His rise to power began in 1990, when as head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, an exiled movement made up primarily of Tutsis, he launched a war to take over his native country from bases in neighboring Uganda.

Four years later, the course of history took a dramatic turn: on April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying Rwanda’s president, Juvénal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was mysteriously shot down on its approach to the capital, Kigali, unleashing the murder spree that became known as the Rwandan genocide. In the space of 100 days, about 800,000 people—most of them members of the Tutsi minority—were killed at the instigation of Hutu extremists. As Kagame and his army gained control of the country, ending the genocide, the Hutu extremists, along with hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, fled to neighboring states, in particular Zaire, as it was then known.

Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, was named president in what seemed an effort at providing representation for the roughly 84 percent Hutu majority in Rwanda’s new national unity government. However, Kagame, a Tutsi and the nominal vice president, kept control of the Rwandan Army, becoming the country’s de facto leader. And by 2000, after numerous cases of forced exiles, disappearances, and assassinations of politicians, Bizimungu resigned the presidency, bringing a definitive end to the illusion of ethnic balance in high office. (The government now prohibits the use of ethnic labels.)

Since then, former Rwandan officials say, almost every position of meaningful power in the country has been held by a Tutsi. In 2001, when Bizimungu began organizing a political party in order to run for president, it was outlawed on charges of being a radical Hutu organization. The following year, Bizimungu was arrested on charges of endangering the state, and later he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

(Bizimungu, whom Amnesty International called a prisoner of conscience, was pardoned by Kagame in 2007, but the methods used to sideline him have been applied broadly ever since, with critics of the regime of all stripes being prosecuted for promoting “genocide ideology,” which has become an all-purpose charge.)

Troubled Neighborhood: For years Rwandan government forces and their proxies have operated in Congo, setting off conflicts that have killed millions.

Theogene Rudasingwa, a Tutsi who was appointed Rwanda’s ambassador to Washington after serving as an officer in Kagame’s army, puts it bluntly: “If you differ strongly with Kagame and make your views known from the inside, you will be made to pay the price, and very often that price is your life.”

Rudasingwa, who now lives in exile in the United States, describes Kagame as an extreme control freak who has concentrated power in the hands of a select group of Tutsis who, like Kagame himself, returned to Rwanda from years of exile in Uganda after the genocide.

“When you look at the structure of key parts of government, leadership is occupied almost entirely by Tutsis from the outside, and this is especially true in the military,” Rudasingwa says. “As for the Hutus, they are completely marginalized, and things [for them] have never been as bad as they are today. Almost the entire Hutu elite that was built up since 1959 is either outside the country or dead. They are marginalized and banished, forced into exile when they haven’t simply been killed.”

Kagame tightly controls the country and its citizens through the Tutsi-
dominated Army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the country’s dominant political party. Throughout Rwanda—in every town and tiny village—the RPF is present, not unlike the Stasi in East Germany during the Cold War. While a town may have a Hutu mayor, under Kagame’s system government officeholders have little authority compared with the RPF representatives who work in parallel to them and often pull rank.

RPF regulations—enforced by local commissars with vigor and steep fines—govern almost every aspect of daily life. There are laws requiring peasants to wear shoes and good clothes when not working their fields and prohibition of drinking banana wine from shared straws—a traditional gesture of reconciliation—and myriad other rules, generally resented as gratuitous and insulting.

“The RPF saturates every aspect of life in Rwanda,” said Susan Thomson, a longtime Rwanda expert at Colgate University. “They know everything: if you’ve been drinking, if you’ve had an affair, if you’ve paid your taxes.” Everything is reported on, Thomson says, and there is no appeal.

From the beginning, Kagame’s legitimacy was founded on his image as the man who had halted the genocide committed by the Hutu-led government and extremist militias. While the vast majority of the 800,000 people killed in the frenzy were Tutsis and moderate Hutus, there are profound flaws in what is usually a rather simplistic telling of the country’s history.

Pointing to the origins of the war and its bloody aftermath, Scott Straus, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, said: “An honest analysis ... would show that the reasons for what happened were much more complicated than the idea that the Hutus hate the Tutsis and want to wipe them out.”

For one thing, there is abundant evidence that Kagame’s forces in the early days carried out targeted executions of the Hutu elite, followed later by much larger extermination campaigns that killed tens of thousands of people.

A year after the genocide had ended, blood was still being spilled, recalls Timothy Longman, then the country director for Human Rights Watch. “People would take me around and say, ‘There’s mass grave right over here,’ and you would ask, ‘From when?’ And they would say, ‘Just from a few weeks ago—not from the genocide,’” says Longman, who now directs the African Studies Center at Boston University.

One of the earliest investigations was undertaken by a U.N. team led by the American Robert Gersony in the fall of 1994. The team conducted research by interviewing people in refugee camps and the countryside. In a report later suppressed by the U.N., partly as a result of American political pressure aimed at supporting the new RPF government, Gersony’s team concluded that four provinces had seen “systematic and sustained killing and persecution of their civilian Hutu populations by the RPA,” the armed wing of the RPF.

Furthermore, the report estimated that the RPA killed between 15,000 and 30,000 people in just four of its survey areas in the summer of 1994. Years later a key member of Gersony’s team told me that the real number of Hutus killed during this period was likely much higher, but that a low estimate had been published because of fears of a political backlash within the U.N. so soon after its failure to stop the larger-scale killing of Tutsis. “What we found was a well-organized military-style operation, with military command and control, and these were military-campaign-style mass murders,” the team member told me.

(In one notorious incident in April 1995, the RPA attacked an internally displaced people’s camp in Kibeho using automatic weapons, grenades, and mortars. A team of Australian medics listed more than 4,000 dead when the RPA forced them to stop counting. France’s leading researcher on the region, Gérard Prunier, estimates that at least 20,000 more people from the camp “disappeared” after the massacre.)

Many people inside the country know this history well but have been prevented from talking about it as the political space has narrowed.
In the run-up to the 2010 election in which Kagame was declared the winner, there was widespread violence, with several journalists and figures from the opposition attacked or killed, including a politician who was beheaded. Amnesty International condemned the violence and the “killings, arrests, and the closure of newspapers and broadcasters [which] reinforced a climate of fear.”

The case of Victoire Ingabire, a politician from the opposition, was instructive. When she returned to Rwanda that year, having lived 16 years in exile, to prepare a run for president, her first stop was at the official genocide memorial. “We are here honoring at this memorial the Tutsi victims of the genocide. There are also Hutu who were victims of crimes against humanity and war crimes, not remembered or honored here,” she said in a prepared statement. “Hutu are also suffering. They are wondering when their time will come to remember their people. In order for us to get to that desirable reconciliation, we must be fair and compassionate towards every Rwandan’s suffering.”

Ingabire was promptly arrested and accused of “genocide ideology.” During her trial, President Kagame publicly declared that she was guilty.

Tiny Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills because of its verdant, rolling countryside of strikingly fertile farmland. It is a land of beauty and unrelenting order. But unlike its much larger neighbor Congo, it is not endowed with any mineral wealth to speak of. Yet Rwanda’s economy depends on the exploitation of Congolese resources.

Through mafialike networks reportedly run by the Rwandan Army and the RPF, huge quantities of Congo’s minerals are siphoned out of the country, experts say.

As early as 2000, Rwanda was believed to be making $80 million to $100 million annually from Congolese coltan alone, roughly the equivalent of the entire defense budget, according to Reyntjens, the Belgian expert.

Pillaging the Congo obscures Rwanda’s giant military budget from foreign donors who provide as much as 50 percent of the country’s budget every year. It also provides a rich source of income to the urban elites, especially returnees from Uganda, who form the regime’s core.

“After the first Congo war, money began coming in through military channels and never entered the coffers of the Rwandan state,” says Rudasingwa, Kagame’s former lieutenant. “It is RPF money, and Kagame is the only one who knows how much money it is—or how it is spent. In meetings it was often said, ‘For Rwanda to be strong, Congo must be weak, and the Congolese must be divided.’”

Congo looms large in the story of Kagame in other ways as well. For years Rwandan government forces and their proxies have operated in Congo. Twice Rwanda has invaded the country outright, in September 1996, when with U.S. acquiescence it successfully waged war to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko, and again beginning in August 1998, when it mounted a repeat operation to depose Laurent-Désiré Kabila. This second operation, to replace the very man Kagame installed to replace Mobutu, ended in failure but established a pattern of intervention and meddling aimed at undermining its much larger neighbor. The ensuing war, involving several African nations, is believed to have cost the lives of 5 million people.

As early as 1997, the U.N. estimated that Rwandan forces had caused the deaths of 200,000 Hutus in Congo; Prunier, the French expert, has since estimated that the toll is closer to 300,000. According to the U.N. report, these deaths could not be attributed to the hazards of war or to collateral damage. “The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces.” The report concluded that the systematic and widespread attacks, “if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide.”

Two years ago, Kagame delivered a lecture in London on “The Challenges of Nation-Building in Africa: The Case of Rwanda.” When confronted with a U.N. report that was then making headlines with the suggestion that his forces had committed genocide in Congo, he dismissed such allegations as “baseless” and “absurd.” Clearly he was keener to talk about economic indicators and repeat the oft-told success story of his country.

But even that is a truth with modification. Social inequality in Rwanda is high and rising, experts say. Despite an average annual growth rate of about 5 percent since 2005, poverty is soaring in the countryside, where few Western journalists report without official escort.

“The rural sector has suffered enormous extraction under the post-genocide government, far more than what had happened before,” said one longtime researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There is a real increase in misery. When you speak of Rwanda as a volcano, that’s what’s involved.”

Will Rwanda explode again? The big, looming issue is whether Kagame will leave office in 2017, as the Constitution calls for. With so much to answer for, few expect a straightforward exit.

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HOWARD W. FRENCH 

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Famine hits over 100,000 Rwandan families in Eastern province

Reports of famine ravaging parts of Rwanda have led to blame games, with some faulting government policies in drought-prone areas while the State says climate change is responsible for poor harvests.

Close to 100,000 families mainly in the Eastern Province districts of Kanyonza, Rwamagana, Nyagatare, Bugesera, Kayonza and Kirehe as well as Nyanza and Gisagara districts in Southern Province, are facing a threat of hunger if nothing is done to avert it.

Rwandans are reportedly moving to neighbouring Uganda in search of food but pastoralists are left with no options as animals grow thinner by the day. PHOTO | CYRIL NDEGEYA

It is reported that hundreds are fleeing starvation to neighbouring Uganda in search of food after two seasons of poor harvests which left families with nothing to eat.

The most affected districts include Nyagatare, Kayonza and Ngoma where residents say harvests were largely affected by early disappearance of rain. Hectares of maize and sorghum dried up before they could be ready for harvest.

“We don’t know what to do. We have not even been able to recoup what we planted,” said Solange Uwantege, a resident of Mwili Sector, Kayonza district, pointing to the four hectares of sorghum and maize they had planted as a group.

Apart from dried up plants, thousands of livestock are facing severe shortage of water and foliage. Residents of Nyagatare say the drought started earlier than expected.

“Usually the drought intensifies in late July to early September, when rains resume but now it started in May. We are not sure if our livestock will still be alive by then,” adds Jean Marie Mugabo, a resident of Nyagatare.

The Governor of the Eastern Province Odette Uwamariya and the mayors of the affected districts admit that there is a looming hunger crisis but say that instead of fleeing to neighbouring countries, locals should contact local government officials for help.

Government failure

Civil society groups are blaming the government for failing to address the longstanding recurrence of food insecurity in parts of the country prone to drought despite the billions of francs which have been allocated to the agriculture sector.

Appearing on a local radio station, the chairperson of Transparency International Rwanda Chapter, Marie Immaculee Ingabire, blamed the hunger threat on poor planning, policy and decision making especially on the side of local government officials.

“It is an issue of poor planning and decision making by government officials. There are countries which receive far less rainfall than Rwanda but they plan well and their citizens don’t encounter hunger,” Ms Ingabire said.

Alexis Nkurunziza, an official of the Umbrella of Human Rights Organisations in Rwanda said that the government failure to fully prioritise agriculture in terms of planning and resource allocation is likely to setback the country’s gains in food security.

“A lot of progress has been made in the past five or so years, even going by what the government was allocating to the agriculture sector in areas of irrigation, extension services, but this momentum has slowed down,” Mr Nkurunziza said.

“We are at a point where more needs to be done to sustain the gains in the agriculture sector, rather than slowing down,” he said, adding that the external factors given by government to cut down expenditure in the sector are not convincing enough.
The government reduced spending on agriculture from 11 per cent of the total budget in 2015/16 fiscal year to 7.5 per cent this year.

Mr Nkurunziza says that reduced focus on the sector will have major implications including food insecurity, poverty, malnutrition and households which can’t sustain themselves.

Short-term measures

The 2015 Auditor-General’s report indicates that irrigation equipment procured by government in the district of Nyagatare at a cost of Rwf2.7 billion was put to waste.

The AG also raised the red flag on the mismanagement of resources meant for the Crop Intensification Programme and the Post-Harvest Handling and Storage Taskforce, warning that this might set back the country’s gains in food security.
The Minister of State for Agriculture, Tony Nsanganira said that the government has put in place short-term measures to avert the current shortage of food as well as long-term plans to avoid the recurrence of the same.

He, however, dismissed claims that policy and decision making are to blame for the recurrent food shortage in drought stricken parts of the country instead noting that climate change is responsible for the inconsistent rains.

“We have been aware of this situation since September last year and we have been monitoring it. The affected areas are the Eastern Province affected by drought and parts of Western and Northern provinces which were affected by floods. We are identifying families which have been affected and through the food for work approach, are providing them with food from our grain reserves,” Mr Nsanganira said.

Long-term efforts

He said the government has put in place other subsidies, forfeiting the seeds the government had given farmers and cooperatives due to poor harvest.

Mr Nsanganira said that the government is looking at long-term solutions to hunger and drought recurrence in Eastern Province with a new approach to irrigation where by farmers and cooperatives will be assisted to get irrigation kits and own them rather than the government buying them.

“We will help farmers acquire irrigation equipment with a subsidy of up to 50 per cent and link co-operatives to financial institutions. This is a more sustainable approach because farmers own these programmes,” he said.

He noted that the new approach will address the challenges identified by the Auditor-General because people will directly own the projects, rather than the government.

Mr Nsanganira said investigations are going on and some arrests have been made in regard to the mismanagement and vandalisation of the costly projects.

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Rwanda’s Untold Story Documentary

This World Rwanda's Untold Story BBC Documentary 2014

Twenty years on from the Rwandan genocide, This World reveals evidence that challenges the accepted story of one of the most horrifying events of the late 20th century. The current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has long been portrayed as the man who brought an end to the killing and rescued his country from oblivion. Now there are increasing questions about the role of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front forces in the dark days of 1994 and in the 20 years since.




The film investigates evidence of Kagame's role in the shooting down of the presidential plane that sparked the killings in 1994 and questions his claims to have ended the genocide. It also examines claims of war crimes committed by Kagame's forces and their allies in the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and allegations of human rights abuses in today's Rwanda.

Former close associates from within Kagame's inner circle and government speak out from hiding abroad. They present a very different portrait of a man who is often hailed as presiding over a model African state. Rwanda's economic miracle and apparent ethnic harmony has led to the country being one of the biggest recipients of aid from the UK. Former prime minister Tony Blair is an unpaid adviser to Kagame, but some now question the closeness of Mr Blair and other western leaders to Rwanda's president.

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