Trust is a challenge in Rwanda »
The BBC’s Peter Day visited Rwanda recently to find out more about the ambitions for the country. The first part of his report is now online. Peter visited the veg-tastic Kimironko market, talked to Louise Mushikiwabo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carina Tertsakian, from Human Rights Watch, Josh Ruxin of Rwanda Works and Heaven Restaurant [...]
Match of the day »
I headed out to Rubona, 35 kilometres east of Kigali, last Saturday to watch a football match. Stoke City were playing Arsenal at the Britannia Stadium in Stoke-upon-Trent in an English premiership match.
A contact from London was in Rwanda for one week to see how feasible it would be to broadcast live football on a [...]
Three hours in Kigali »
Some 26 years after Mitterand, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Kigali today for a total of around three hours. The newly appointed French Ambassador to Rwanda, Laurent Contini, had already stolen much of Sarko’s thunder by announcing the big news earlier in the day; the French school in Kigali is set to re-open in September [...]
Rwanda stamping back to 1970 »
Flickr user Footysphere takes a great look back at some postage stamps apparently issued by Rwanda during the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. I say “apparently” as, according to stamp spotters on the Internet, there are a lot of fake vintage stamps produced around the world and Rwanda has fallen victim on occasion. If you’re [...]
On the tantalite trail with the knicker bomber »
The Liverpool Echo uses CCTV camera footage to trace the 4350 mile journey of “disgruntled Rwandan businessman” Claude Rubagire as he travelled from Burundi to a factory in Liverpool in March, 2009. The businessman came armed with possibly the world’s most ingenious improvised (non) explosive device – the panty bomb.
For a year Rubagire had tried, [...]
Returning to Rwanda after 16 years »
In the wake of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, an estimated 2 million Hutus fled across the border to DR Congo. Nearly 16 years later, some of these Rwandans are coming home under a reconciliation and repatriation programme sponsored by the United Nations and the Rwanda government. Sorious Samura reports on the returnees for Al Jazeers’a [...]
Rwanda changed my life, but not as much as Uganda »
Go online and read about Rwanda for more than 5 minutes and I guarantee you’ll learn three things very, very quickly – Rwanda has been “completely transformed”, “plastic bags are banned” and “the streets are clean”. These observations are factually accurate and many Rwandans are rightly proud of them. However, there’s one other, perhaps less [...]
Blue monkeys hunted in Kabaya Valley? »
Marcell Claassen at the excellent Birding in Rwanda blog highlights the disturbing case of a suspected blue monkey killing in the Kabaya valley, south of Kibungo in south eastern Rwanda. Marcell picked up the message on the Rwanda Burundi Birds Yahoo Group. The report, by Jason Anderson, has not as far as I know been [...]
The worst article on Rwanda and DR Congo you will read all year »
It wasn’t just me who read David Smith’s “Letter from Africa” in The Guardian open mouthed this morning. Fortunately for us, my friend Christopher Vourlias takes the 1,000 word corpse into the operating theatre and dissects it into oblivion. The article is an attempt at a “colour” piece about a trip from Kigali to Goma [...]
What makes Rwanda happy? »
During his recent trip to Rwanda, photojournalist Simon Sticker asked his photo-workshop trainees the question: What makes you happy? Fortunately for us, he filmed their answers.
The idea was inspired by the series ‘50 people, one question’ which made that before in London and a couple of cities in the US. And it was interesting to [...]
