I often wonder why the West is much more interested in aid deliveries than in fair trade, for example. The fair exchange of goods would place far more money into the hands of the affected people than relief operations.

Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story.

The new Rwanda is about building an economy that delivers prosperity and opportunity for our citizens based on a robust private sector. Foreign adventures would be costly and counterproductive distractions from these challenging objectives.

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.

In Rwanda, we have a society that has experienced a very serious rupture and you can't expect all of a sudden that things will be perfect. Even so: You cannot find any more areas where any segment of the population would be afraid to go, like we used to have before. But there is always a lot more to do.

Rwanda is a democracy not a monarchy.

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.