President Paul Kagame has said that for partnership to exist, there has to be mutual respect between involved entities. He was speaking at the 40th anniversary of Rwanda-Rhineland palatinate partnership on May 9, where he joined virtually Malu Dreyer, the Minister President of Rhineland Palatinate, Svenja Schulze, Minister of economic cooperation and development, and Dr. Sierk Poetting, Chief Operating Officer of BioNTech Group. Rhineland-Palatinate is a southwest German state with more than 4 million people. In his address, Kagame said that for every country, whether developed or less developed, everything; politics, security, stability, and governance, is work in progress. “That’s why the word partnership is always going to be very important. And in partnership, people have mutual respect. They disagree and agree, above all they continue working together to move forward.” He said that Rwandans have not wasted time to learn lessons from their own situation or “lessons we can draw from the strength of partnership we have with different people, especially Rhineland Palatinate and Germany.” “We look forward to working in that way of mutual respect…that’s what makes sense of any partnership,” he added. Therefore, Kagame said, we seek to take charge of our destiny by partnering with different countries to build world class institutions and healthy highly educated population. “Going forward, this is the spirit that should guide and anchor our partnership.” The head of state also highlighted that the relationship is reinforced by the good development partnership that Rwanda enjoys with Germany as a whole. As both countries look to the future with fresh eyes, Kagame cited private sector and businesses linkages. He gave an example of BioNTech based in Rhineland Palatinate, whose innovation has changed the world for the better and saved countless lives. “We are very pleased to have partnered with BioNTech to build a MrNA vaccine production facility in Rwanda. This will not only impact Africans as resilient in the face of pandemic but also transfer skills and knowledge to Rwandan engineers and scientists,” said Kagame. In February, BioNTech introduced the first modular mRNA manufacturing facility to promote scalable vaccine production in Africa. The model is in form of a container solution dubbed “BioNTainer” and it is expected to reduce the time that would have otherwise been spent building a manufacturing plant and ensuring conformity to standards.
