Joyce Banda is a Malawian politician who served as President of Malawi from April 2012 to May 2014. She was Malawi's fourth and first woman president. Before becoming president, she served in parliament and then as vice president, from 2009 to 2012.

Malawi's former president was in Kigali as one of the key speakers at the May 29-31 Africa Soft Power Summit, themed "Africa Now: Connecting Africa—Shaping the Global Social and Economic Priorities of Our Time” where she shared her experience and the journey that led her to Malawi’s State House.

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In an interview with The New Times’ Jessica Agasaro, the former Head of State also shared some of the inspirations she got from President Paul Kagame long before she became president, and some of the projects she implemented.

The excerpts:

When you started your speech, you listed some of the projects you implemented in Malawi and how our President [Paul Kagame] inspired you. Please elaborate on that.

I have followed President Kagame’s visionary leadership for a long time, but I must also confess that I’ve had an opportunity to get close to him because his wife and I belong to one prayer group. So, because I was watching what he was doing for his people here, I didn’t even know that I was going to become president. And the second I became president, I remembered Rwanda. So, I worked with some people who were working here as well.

There are three projects, at least, that I copied from here: one is a one cow per [poor] family project; two is Bye-Bye Nyakatsi, the building of rural housing; and the third is a One Acre Fund. Those are projects that even then, my detractors, my enemies in Malawi, were saying ‘she was wasting time, she was giving out cows...’ But now I built the road, the water tanks, the bigger project, and I added more electricity to the grid. Today, if you ask every Malawian, they will say, ‘oh, she built a house...’ They are still remembering those three projects.

For me, I am forever grateful, and I had the opportunity to come back [to Rwanda] two years ago. I came for about 10 days because the First Lady invited me to our prayer group globally.

As a leader who defends women and their rights, what is needed to further promote women’s leadership in Africa?

I think what must happen is; we must engage our male leaders on the continent. Some of us have reached a stage where we can knock on their doors on behalf of other women, because our African men are keen to support. But we must have our own style of conduct, and dialogue; we must respect our male leaders. We must engage them instead of confronting them or abusing them. We must engage them and have discussion about what needs to be done on the continent. There is so much that needs to be done still. But, in my opinion, we are making progress.

What is your message to young African women today?

For young women, I must advise them to be persistent. It’s not going to be an easy ride, but they must always know that somebody has to do it. So, they cannot say ‘Oh, I cannot stand for elected office because I will be abused’ [because] then we are losing out. You women who are professionals are refusing to join politics because of abuse, because of the scandalisation, because of the name-calling... But at the end of the day, it is now any ordinary women coming to take that seat in parliament. And then people say the quality is low! But, yes, the quality has been affected because you are scared, because you’re chickening out!

What we need to know is to stand strong as women, take any risk that is required, join politics even as professional women because, at the end of the day, you go to parliament and you have women of substance and you can contribute properly.

Anything you would like to tell the Rwandan people?

What I would like to say to Rwandan people is that what they see here [in Rwanda] should not be taken for granted.

It’s not happening everywhere else.

And, for me, it’s good to be back and to eat, in Malawi we call it sukari, the short bananas. I love them. I came here yesterday, and that was the first thing I looked for, along with tilapia and cassava ugali.