The 2024 Rwandan electoral campaign is coming to an end. To maintain its widely recognised growth momentum, Rwanda needs to re-elect the national favourite: RPF Chairman and 4 time President, Afande Paul Kagame. As the polling date approaches, foreign content - for we can hardly call that clickbait nonsense journalism anymore - floods international media, questioning our democratic processes, the number of consecutive mandates that our President can serve, and whether Rwandans truly hold a power of choice. I wish the authors of these pieces would elaborate on what they’re hoping to achieve with that insulting line of questioning. Considering the succession of war criminals, Nazi sympathisers and fascists, sexual abusers and confused geriatrics that have ruled western countries unchallenged, I find the concern as to who Africans democratically elect rather fishy....and this without even raising the issue of the number of coups and presidential assassinations that “they” have orchestrated on our soil. These people hold no moral authority to challenge our sovereign right to elect or re-elect whoever we choose, let alone a visionary with a track record of such success that even his critics must reluctantly praise his performance. Much of the world is in turmoil, and when elections occur amid volatile times, an informed electorate must entrust the reins of power to the candidate that most possesses the following qualities: The ability to fight and win The capacity to deliver on a country’s ambitions, even in the face of adversity The integrity to demand and enforce accountability The heart, spirit and grit to fuel the collective will Good old charisma and grace, because who doesn’t want to be proud of the figure that represents them on the world stage? For Rwandans, this person bears the face and name of President Paul Kagame. The fight is real, guys This may seem a little dramatic, however the fabric of global civilisation is hanging by a thread. The effects of global warming are estimated to be responsible for the deaths of over 315,000 people yearly and have turned millions into climate change refugees, leading to humanitarian crises that pile atop those caused by mounting insecurity in resource-rich regions. In the Global South, where the majority of people on the planet reside, the fiscal henchmen of the Global North - 3 letter acronyms that dictate policy and trade across the world - have intentionally exacerbated income inequality by crushing the living wage, pushing countless frontliners of global economic growth into abject poverty. In high income countries, the incidence of depression across all demographics has been on a steady rise. Contemporary media has been weaponized to anaesthetise populations as their social welfare progressively diminishes. In essence, the western-centric global civilization bears many signs of an empire in decline, matching the paradigmatic features evident in, for example, the Ottoman and Roman Empires on the eve of their collapse: loan dependency and excessive inflation, cultural decay, environmental degradation, social devaluation of academic professions (think of AI and put a pin in it - we shall return to this point later), rise in resistance movements, and a general sense of social discontentment. Enter Africa, a continent rich in resources increasingly coveted worldwide. Its youthful demographic presents a population brimming with untapped potential. Vast tracts of fertile land await cultivation, offering the prospect of significant agricultural development. Industrial and market structures are nascent, poised for future growth. Globalization's touch, usually very effective at mutilating non-western identity, has been minimal or moderate. A revitalization of Pan-Africanist intellectual discourse seems to be unfolding. Perhaps for the first time since colonization, Africa possesses the tools to narrate its own stories and centralize knowledge pertaining to its cultures, history and ambitions. Assertive leadership on the African continent could potentially catalyse a shift in the global power dynamic, enabling African nations to transcend their peripheral role in the current system. This proactive approach would liberate us from a position of mere resource exploitation, and prevent African limbs from remaining logs in the fire that keeps the western world warm....especially now, that nightfall looms, up north. What next after PK is reelected? Following President Kagame’s likely re-election, the feedback of those from whom we must achieve mental emancipation should neither be solicited nor considered. Instead, let’s remove the pin on AI. We are entering an era of rampant media unaccountability; while a journalist (or any other individual) may be sanctioned for publishing disprovable narratives, AI cannot. Sadly, Artificial Intelligence is now used to draft an increasing number of articles on/against Rwanda, based on trends in western public opinion and on archaic racist material legimitising, for instance, the vile “Rwandan double-genocide theory”. I asked ChatGPT the name of the Genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994, and this was its response: “The genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994 is known as the Rwandan Genocide”. It also shrunk the established death toll by a fifth, reducing the number of fatalities to eight hundred thousand, when over a million people, whose names are documented, were brutally murdered. Can AI be racist? Well, it would never refer to the Holocaust as the German-occupied Europe genocide. During the Holocaust, a distinct set of Europeans was targetted, and this specificity must be acknowledged, otherwise the genocide denotation is in itself inapplicable. AI is not neutral. Far from it. Mounting evidence suggests that AI systems, by design and through the data they are trained on, tend to perpetuate existing social biases and inequalities, ultimately favoring a status quo established by those who develop and deploy them. Nevertheless, AI, while potentially damaging, can be used to fantastic ends, much like social media itself. Should Africans and specifically Rwandans use their platforms and digital communities to contribute to cultural transmission and oppose mistruths on our history and political processes, the status quo can indeed be changed, and a subsequent, desirable shift in AI’s knowledge, positioning and delivery could eventually result. For the love of God, RPF, PK, and Rwanda....speak. The absence of one's voice from a discourse concedes the narrative to those who actively participate. Rwandans should recognise that we hold a significant share of responsibility on the narratives shared on Rwanda across the world. Where applicable, we must denounce, oppose, and correct. We are not mute. Someone famously wrote: “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” Well, good writing is unattainable should we hesitate to write at all in the first place. I worry that this is the issue that has worked in favour of lies propagated online against Rwanda. We do not speak enough. A crippling self-consciousness impedes many from expressing themselves, as if they worry that their words will not cascade prettily enough or resonate perfectly with audiences who would never concern themselves with mastering our own languages. Why? Writing skill or linguistic fluency should be no impediment to early writing; no sophisticated twist of tongue makes a lie more worthy of ink than the truth, however the latter is presented. If Rwandan youth wishes to do more for the common fight than merely voting to re-elect President Kagame en masse, I suggest that they put pen to paper. It makes no sense that the monopoly of information on our reality should lie in the hands of the same institutions that turned a blind eye to the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, or that deny our sovereignty, come every election. This is Rwandans’ story. Who else is better placed than we are, to tell it accurately? Certainly not AI; certainly not westerners. Across both scholarly discourse and the digital agora, I look forward to reading us more....almost as much as I do offering a half-genuine prayer for speedy recovery to Rwanda’s critics, come Afande Paul Kagame’s exciting re-election. May they survive yet another embarrassing defeat. The writer is a social commentator.
