President Paul Kagame has said that Rwanda’s toughest challenge after its liberation was rebuilding a shattered shattered nation, uniting its people and making them understand their history.

He made the comments during an interview that was aired via the national broadcaster on July 4 as part of the Liberation Day.

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Among the questions that were posed to him during the broadcast was one on what he thought was the toughest challenge that the country had to tackle after liberation. He responded:

"Understandably, bringing the country back together and making people understand their history, the challenges they face and how to overcome them. That was probably the most difficult part of this journey we have traveled in the last 30 years.”

Alongside that, he noted that there have also been key challenges in terms of improving people’s livelihoods.

"They (people) have to have a standard of living that is worth living, and they have to deliver that mainly to themselves, much as the government and institutions have a big role to play as an enabler and as being able to create the environment that will facilitate that,” he said.

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He added that in order for the standards of living to improve, the government had a challenge to create a stable environment characterised with peace and security so that every citizen feels they can do something for themselves.

Talking about the lessons learned in the past 30 years, he said much has been learned by working out things within the country or by borrowing lessons from other nations.

"There are things you do that may not work as well or fast as intended, and you have an opportunity the following year or years to tweak that and see what fits the present time one is in,” he said.

He added: "As a country and as a people, we have really learned a lot from others. Look at for example when we were writing the constitution that started operating in 2003. It came together building on our own Rwandan circumstances, but we borrowed ideas and different things from other countries.”

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For instance, he said Rwanda looked at the constitution of South Africa because of some similarities in the two countries’ history. He added that during the same process, some lessons were learned from the East African region as well as the United States of America and Europe.