By David Himbara
At the opening of the Transform Africa Summit hosted by President Paul Kagame, the Rwandan head of state welcomed the attendees as follows:
“We are honoured by the presence of delegations from every corner of our continent and beyond, and especially by the Honourable Ministers here representing their Heads of State today.”
That sums up the situation — Kagame failed to attract even a single African leader to attend his so-called Transform Africa Summit. The whole thing flopped.
African leaders have long discovered that Kagame’s pretentious ”transform Africa” is a gimmick for boasting. Even his being chairman of the African Union did not persuade fellow presidents to join the shambolic Summit in Rwanda.
The attendance was poor. Kagame had to fill the conference hall with Rwandan officials including soldiers and policemen.
Sure enough, Kagame used the platform to boast
Kagame boasted about his infrastructure and education:
“There is no doubt that technology is the foundation of modern, high-income economies. That is why we are investing so much in physical infrastructure and in the education required to use it.”
These are lies. Begin with the fact that Rwanda has a mere 216 Megawatts of electricity of which 21% is lost due to the dilapidated infrastructure. This — in a country of 12 million.
As the famous saying goes, you can fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
