There are African leaders who have the dangerous habit of leading their people into an abyss. In Rwanda we've had presidents who killed. The one million people who died here were, to a certain extent, victims of their leader, President Juvénal Habyarimana, who died in a plane crash before the genocide began. He contributed to all that. The man who took over from him was running around ordering people to kill. If this president came back and landed in my hands, I would have him arrested and tried. Unfortunately, he died a natural death.

In Africa today, we recognise that trade and investment, and not aid, are pillars of development.

A strong leader is not necessarily a bad leader.

Rwanda is rebuilding itself once again as one nation and that is the reason why we are making progress. Now many Rwandans are making their ends meet and others are able to do better than they have before.

Aid leads to more aid and more aid and more aid and less independence of the people that are receiving aid.

Aid makes itself superfluous if it is working well. Good aid takes care to provide functioning structures and good training that enables the recipient country to later get by without foreign aid. Otherwise, it is bad aid.

I had to fight hard for everything. I wanted to get out. I want to take my destiny into my own hands and escape the vicious cycle of retaliatory violence. This struggle has shaped who I am to this day.