welcome to the african leadership series
where we bring you great
inspirational speeches of african
leaders
somebody should find that
associating with africa is beneficial
and for example africa and the united
states if they worked together
it would benefit both africa
and the united states then
when you have africa dealing with
individual countries or
ignoring them altogether but for small
countries like rwanda
it's very difficult if you look at
rwanda as a small country in isolation
and not in the context of the continent
so it is difficult
to maintain a predictable consistent
relationship as rwanda and the united
states because within united states
i'll give you quickly an example
affecting rwanda already
you know we used to be eligible
to our goal african
growth opportunity act and then
when rwanda wanted to grow its course
textile industries
and therefore
reduced on the flow of used clothes
into rwanda
some lobbyists people who have
benefiting in the united states
from this trade and by the way they used
clothes most of it come from would come
from china
and they were selling it to africa they
have been selling
doing that and they were selling those
clothes to rwanda
and when we wanted to grow our
industries so the lobbyists who were
benefiting from this used clothes
a trade actually influenced
the powers that be in the united states
to
strike off agoa rwanda so that
we came under punishment for for just
doing that for wanting to grow economy
so you can see a small country trying to
grow its
economy its industries
and has to deal with this situation
then there is a backlash and we have
suffered
for that of course there are exemptions
in the past we have seen
pepfar that we benefited from
and that's how rwanda built its health
systems
uh and even that helped us
to actually deal with the current
pandemic
because we established we established
those strong systems and we were using
support from united states
so but at the same time
united states also and that affects
rwanda
is one of the two countries in the whole
world
that refused to use the terminology
that was agreed by everybody
in the united nations referring to the
tragic events that happened in our
country
as genocide against the tutsis
and you have never understood why
because we even entered into arguments
and said well if you are talking about
holocaust you are talking about
the holocaust of the jews you are not
talking about everybody who died during
that period
when the jews were being killed under
the holocaust
so but for some reasons which they have
not even explained they prefer to say no
no you know some other people died
we went into arguments and but united
states comes out
imagine powerful united states as it is
and is arguing on this non-issue that
has been sorted
out at the un we cannot understand what
is behind it or who benefits from it
so this creates an atmosphere of
unpredictability and that's how it
becomes difficult for one
therefore to predict what is going to
happen going forward in terms of
relationship
we suffer from one fact that
there is so much talk about sovereignty
but you find
either we don't qualify to have these
sovereign rights
every other person across the world
wants to decide either for rwanda
or decide for africa
and therefore
the best thing is to let africa and
rwanda
be partners with developed countries
powerful countries
and rwanda or africa therefore decide
on what we want for us
ourselves going forward for example
and we are just reminded by this
pandemic
when you find that countries are
suffering because
they do not have health systems
built in a manner that will serve them
when such a
pandemic strike therefore that means we
need to build
our health systems we need to look at
climate change that affects us we need
to look at
growing our industries and united states
has a lot to offer
in these areas to make rwanda and africa
be able to stand
on their own and strong as partners of
the united states
so this this is what you would ask any
government an administration of united
states
and i think it has been there for
decades as we know it if you like more
african speeches like this
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