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.

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.

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

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.

We cannot turn the clock back nor can we undo the harm caused, but we have the power to determine the future and to ensure that what happened never happens again.

There are some who are scared by unity and by building a country on the basis of ideas.

I know that the fact that I am candidate to my own succession in 2017 can be perceived to be a bad thing by some part of the public opinion outside Rwanda and I don't mind because I know that I am doing it for a good cause. It really doesn't matter to me that my name is associated to those critics as long as I know that I am doing the will of the people.