University of Rwanda’s debating team is set to represent Africa at the Commonwealth Inter-Tertiary Schools Debating Championship.

The team qualified for the global championship after winning second place in the championship, which was held at the African level in Abuja, Nigeria.

The African Level Commonwealth Inter-tertiary Debate Championship competition was held at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abuja, Nigeria from 1 to 4 June and was organised by the commonwealth society of Nigeria.

Over 25 universities from all over Africa took part in the competition but only three were selected to represent Africa in the championship, including University of Rwanda. 

The teams shall be heading to London for more debating rounds and an awarding ceremony will later be held by the Queen of England in September this year.

The prizes for the championship winners include the Queen Elizabeth global award, Commonwealth global ambassador, and an award for the best debating institution among others.

Due to the pandemic only one Rwandan university was able to take part among the three that had been invited.

Abeil Intwarane, a law student and one of the debaters revealed that they were to oppose the motion "Technology has made the world a better place” unfortunately the team they had to compete with didn’t attend.

"This put us at a disadvantage because we had to instead do public speaking and as you know, it’s very difficult to earn good points from public speaking.”

Nonetheless, the experience was exciting and educational for a debater who loves learning new tricks and skills, he said. 

"A continental level competition like this is like hitting a jackpot of knowledge and skills. We expected strong African debaters and the reality was they were even stronger than we had thought,” he said.

"We were debating on the last day so we had time to prepare. We are among 3 teams representing Africa on the global level that will take place in London in September and I was the best speaker of the competition,” he added.

Mick Ndayishimiye, a final year student in General Medicine said that they expected many universities to attend but this wasn’t possible due to Covid-19. 

"Compared to other international debates we have participated in, we expected this to be the same with many rounds, knock outs, semi-finals and the final. However the reality is that, it was a one-round debate, thus it was imperative that we work super hard to be the best and be selected into the top three universities to represent Africa globally.”

"Winning the debate was not enough! It had to be big enough to qualify us to the global level,” he added.

Ndayishimiye’s advice to fellow youth is that in addition to excelling in their courses at school, they have to step out of their comfort zone and work on their extra-curricular skills to be able to express what they know publicly and help the community.

"Being a medical student was never a limit to what I can do to help my community and bring pride to our beloved University of Rwanda and the country Rwanda on a global scene.”