Rwandan President honoured in France

A French cancer institute has named an auditorium in honour of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Kagame on Wednesday, May 19, inaugurated the ‘President Paul Kagame Auditorium’ at the Research Institute against Digestive Cancer (IRCAD) which was founded in 1994 in Strasbourg, France by Prof. Jacques Marescaux, a surgeon fascinated by technology.

IRCAD is a world leader in advancing and teaching minimally invasive surgery and Rwanda is readying to host the institution’s continental centre following a partnership signed between the centre and the country in 2018.

The IRCAD Africa centre based in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, will allow African surgeons to access some of the best training programmes in surgery. Since 2019, IRCAD Africa has operated from temporary offices in Kigali as a permanent office is being constructed in the Masaka suburb of Kigali.

Kagame was among the participants in person when a dozen African leaders, several European leaders and some heads of international organizations, earlier this week, attended the International Conference on Sudan and the Summit on Financing African Economies, in Paris, France, on the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Rwandan leader who arrived in France last weekend also held bilaterals with his host and other French leaders, bearing on the seemingly revived Rwanda-France rapprochement. Macron is also expected in Kigali next week. The role of France in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has, for long, weighed heavily on the two nations' relations.

France and Rwanda have a chance

Macron whose term ends mid next year has laboured to bury the hatchet but he faces opposition from an extremist and unrepentant old guard back home, causing uncertainty over how things will unravel in the near future. But there is hope, especially as Kigali is open to opportunities to build a better future.

During a televised interview with French media outlets France 24 and RFI on the sidelines of the Summits in Paris, Kagame said he thinks France and Rwanda have a chance and good basis on which to create a good relationship as it should have been. "The rest we can leave behind us,” he said.

On whether Rwanda would seek an apology from France, Kagame said: “That matter is upon France to decide what is best for them. The worst thing I can do is ask anybody to apologize, I leave it to them." Many former French leaders still deny the genocide against the Tutsi despite overwhelming evidence that genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was carefully planned and executed by a genocidal regime, aided by France, then led by President François Mitterand.

The European country is also still home to hundreds of Rwandan genocide fugitives who were invited and given protection by the French establishment.