Heads of national central bureaus of Interpol from 11 countries are gathering in Kigali from April 25 to Friday, April 28, to share insights on how to tackle issues of transnational crimes and terrorism.
Countries including Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania are among those represented.
Speaking to the media, the head of Interpol’s regional bureau for East Africa based in Nairobi, Gideon Kimilu, noted that the most important thing which has convened Interpol officials in Kigali is to learn from one another and "more so from the Rwandan experience” of managing border security.
He said the countries in the region are doing well in fighting cross-border crime, but Rwanda is doing better.
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"There is a lot which we can learn from Rwanda. The Rwandan security agencies, law enforcement agencies, the national police service, the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB), the immigration and Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) are working very closely together to make sure that the country and the region is safe,” he said.
According to the Secretary General of RIB, Col Jeannot Ruhunga, Rwanda has systems in place to share information among the institutions in charge of the movement of goods and people across the country’s borders. As a result, a number of cross-border crimes have been thwarted.
"For example, recently we intercepted a car that was suspected to have been stolen from Uganda,” he noted.
"RIB, immigration, and RRA have integrated their information systems in such a way that officials at the border have information about all the stolen vehicles or criminals that are wanted by security agencies around the world,” he added.
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Senior Commissioner of the Ugandan Police and Deputy Director at the Interpol bureau in Kampala Uganda, Joseph Obwona, told the media that for Interpol to be effective in combating transnational organized crimes, they need to have good information sharing mechanisms among the countries.
He noted that the countries have done relatively well in this regard so far, but more should be done by putting in place more technologies for sharing information.
He added that Rwanda has had some remarkable improvement in building its infrastructure and work under the Interpol framework and East African countries "have converged here to benchmark on the Rwandan experiences we can borrow here and take back to our countries.”