KIGALI, Rwanda, July 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has told African youth that their role in fighting corruption is not to give or receive. He made the remarks during an interactive session July 21 with youth from various African countries who are participating at the two-day Youth Dialogues conference organized by the Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS) in Kigali, Rwanda.
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Responding to various questions from young men and women from different parts of Africa, President Kagame said young people should be assertive and resist injustice in whatever form it manifests itself:
"Sometimes 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."
President Kagame pointed out that Africans should endeavor 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," said the President. "We have accepted a sense of mediocrity and a tendency to look at others and not to ourselves for solutions."
He added: "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 platform 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 African countries drawn from Community leaders, students, journalists and political parties within the age bracket of 15-45 years.
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