Over one year after it was officially launched in the country, the Pan African Movement Rwanda chapter (PAM Rwanda) has taken root at the grassroots level, after it was established at almost all institutions of higher learning in the country.
Between November 17 and 17, leaders of the movement held discussions in all the districts in the country, where different sections of the population were enlightened on the values on which the movement is built and what embracing these values means for Africans as a people.
Different speakers likened Pan Africanism to our own Ndi Umunyarwanda programme, saying that if expanded to ‘Ndi Umunyafurika’ the continent will most definitely discard the unfair tag it has had to wear as the ‘Dark Continent’ that has for generation remained in the shadows of her colonizers.
The movement is taking shape across the continent and leaders across Africa have a common understanding that it will be the ultimate vehicle to drive the continent development blueprint dubbed Agenda 2063.
Agenda 2063 strives to enable Africa remain committed to the ideals envisaged in the context of a rapidly changing world, to the continent’s accelerated development and technological progress so as to ensure positive socio-economic transformation within the next 50 years.
Different individuals who participated in the discussions across district expressed their conviction and optimism that the movement had very good intentions for the continent, just like the Ndi Umunyarwanda programme which has received mass support in Rwanda in the quest for Rwandans to regain their dignity and take charge of their destiny.
Chantal Murebwayire, one of the youths who attended the training session held in Kirehe District said that mainstreaming pan Africanist values in their day-to-day activities will come a long way in uplifting their communities, and central to this being looking from within themselves for solutions to problems afflicting their respective communities.
“We as the youth are normally caught in the mix. Most of us normally look to countries in Europe or America to have a good life even after they have completed school. Following this training, I am going to embark on a campaign to educate my fellow youth that the best way is to put Africa and country first in everything we do,” said Murebwayire.
She said that for Rwandans it will be not a difficult job to entrench in them these pan Africanist values because of the transformative leadership they have witnessed over the past two decades, whose principles are not any different from what pan Africansm preachers.
In Ngoma District Aphrodis Nambaje, the mayor who doubles as the leader of the movement in the district said that the reintroduction of Pan Africanism was timely, especially given the development roadmap on which Rwanda has embarked.
He said that the technological advancement that Rwanda has prioritized requires checks and balance especially for the youth not to use the technology counterproductively. “They need ethos as those ensconced through pan Africanism.”
According to Speciose Nyiraneza, the vice chair of the political and social welfare commission in PAM Rwanda, the guiding principle for the movement is ensuring the continent moves in the same direction, adding the in the first place it had stalled because some leaders had an exclusionist agenda.
This is why, she said, they decided to take the sensitization to the grassroots as a way of ensuring everybody is on board.