(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Sanaullah Ataullah |The Peninsula
Doha, Qatar: President of Republic of Rwanda H E Paul Kagame values the investments from Qatar in contributing to the ambitious goal of the country to provide the best infrastructure and prepare human resources.
He spoke in the Presidential Fireside Chat at Global Security Forum 2024 through videoconferencing with moderator, host and Political commentator, The Bottom Line, Al Jazeera English, Steve Clemons. The three-day forum which is being held in Doha will conclude today.
“The main focus is on building a value chain for our economy. We have invested together with the Qatar Airways. The modern airport and other types of infrastructure, digital infrastructure that we are promoting all these are to add value to our economy and therefore rising in levels of the value chain,” said Kagame.
He said that Rwanda is building a foundation of development and investing in people.
“To do so, we invest in the human capital when we provide good education, food security and bring technology and other industries to make the economy of our country vibrant and grow,” said Kagame.
He said that the work is also going to provide service industries like hospitality and biotech Industries and mining because Rwanda has natural resources.
“We need to change the mentality because one, like many other African countries with enormous wealth, actually more countries in Africa have more, just exporting raw materials and not processing, don't add value to anything. We have reversed that, and everyone knows the benefits of doing that,” said Kagame.
To a question about allowing Rwanda to be recolonized by technology, by biotech firms, by foreign players, he said:“We have learned a lot of lessons and Africa should have learned as many lessons as we have. But the question is, we need to show that we have learned lessons. We can't repeat the same mistakes of the past and expect to be better going forward, as we all want.”
“So, for us, from the tragedy and from also understanding the politics, the global politics and their relationships and so on and so forth, he added.
“We have made a choice and to begin with, we work within the setting of the African continent. So, when we talk about the United States, China, maybe some other powers put them together, Europe and so on.”
“We are also seeing US and China competition. We don't think it is correct for Africa that it is consumed by these two powers and crashed in between,” said Kagame.
He said that it is important for Africa, for Rwanda to have this kind of thinking,“we have something to do for ourselves. We have lives to live ourselves. We don't live for others and others don't live for us.”
He said that Rwanda working with other African countries and the continents.“We think we can be friends with others, United States, Europe, China and not be dragged into this kind of conflict that benefits those of us who are conflicting among themselves,” said Kagame.
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