President Paul Kagame on Monday, May 15 received in his office a group of students from Harvard Business School.
In their interactions, they talked about leadership, Rwanda’s history and how the country was rebuilt after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi as well as the lessons learnt.
“No matter how down you are brought by any factors or forces, just don’t accept staying down, find a way up. find a way up,” Kagame told the students.
“Don’t despair. I mean, the country we inherited was completely crushed. First impression, anybody would come and say, ‘Will these people ever find a way up?’ Even those of us, some of them would be wondering ‘Shall we ever rise from this?’
Having raised these questions in one’s mind, the president said, the next thing should be, ‘I won’t accept it.’
He said dignity is what drives every individual, even those who are not conscious about it – even without knowing the definition of what actually drives them.
There are certain goods that must be available to you to realise that, Kagame said. These include the freedom to be able to go to school, to have health provision, to have food, to do business, to think and become productive by yourself, between you and somebody else and in a country, he said.
“The important thing about leadership,” he noted, “is that you have to work with people of the country, the people you lead.”
