Editor,

Reference is made to the letter, "Why UR must think differently” (The New Times, July 1). I agree with Dr. Abeles that there indeed is an urgent need to "think significantly different from the traditional academic model”. However, I don’t share his views that teaching should be favoured over research.

In distinct societies like ours, we can’t and shouldn’t be teaching knowledge developed elsewhere and then merely copied and forced upon us. All our life dimensions are made of components that are peculiar and exclusive to Rwanda, to East Africa, to Africa.

We are not Europeans, we are not Asians, and we are not "universal consumers”. It is all those unique multiple dimensions of our daily individual and collective life, historically denigrated and despised, that need to be thoroughly researched first and rehabilitated.

Then, only then, will we have more pertinent and more appropriate material to hand over as a life sustaining legacy to the future generations.

There, in my view, lies the difference between perpetuating the process of alienation and fostering the process of innovation.

Francois-Xavier Nziyonsenga, Rwanda