President Paul Kagame has called upon African youth from 43 countries to join in efforts of fighting corruption by not participating in it.
He made the remarks during an interactive session with youth from various African countries, who are participating at the Youth Dialogues conference organized by the Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS) in Kigali on July 21, 2014.
Kagame told the young Africans to desist from participating in corruption because then, they would be helping to entrench the social vice.
Responding to various questions from young men and women from different parts of Africa, the President said young people should be assertive and resist injustice in whatever form it manifests itself.
“You need to be stubborn. As they stay on course of causing you problems, you stay on the course of pushing back. At the end you are the ones who pay the price if it goes wrong and benefit if it goes right.”
He pointed out that Africans should endeavour to find solutions to their own problems and resist the urge to look around for assistance and blame for their predicaments.
“The tragedy Rwanda has experienced should be a lesson to us. We cannot go looking for solutions elsewhere. We have accepted a sense of mediocrity and a tendency to look at the others and not to ourselves for solutions.”
He reiterated that the blame for what is wrong goes around but we also need responsibility to go around otherwise we may wait for another 100 years if we keep thinking Western taxpayers are responsible for our development.
“The more we accept responsibility for our problems and the more we look for solutions within, the faster we will develop.”
The annual youth dialogue is the second conference organized by the Mandela institute for Development Studies, following the 2013 Ghana youth dialogue.
The youth dialogue provides a forum for young Africans from across the continent to interrogate current levels of African youth’s involvement in electoral and governance processes.
The Kigali dialogue has attracted about 100 participants from 43 countries drawn from Community leaders, students, journalists