The RPF Bureau Politique meeting that met last week resolved among other things to set up a leadership academy that will equip youth with the party’s principles, values, discipline, and standards of leadership. The 2,000 senior party delegates from across the country that attended the two day event presided over by President Paul Kagame, the party chairman also included many youth who make up more than half of the country. Rwandan youth have over the years been afforded many life-changing opportunities, ranging from education and entrepreneurship to business, sporting and entertainment areas. Indeed, most of them have grabbed some of these opportunities with both hands and have been able to change their lives and impact their communities. The proposed RPF Leadership Academy will enhance those efforts by government but with a more deliberate policy to mentor and train young Rwandans both in the country and diaspora about the tragic history of the country, how a deficit in leadership caused mayhem in the country from 1962 to 1994, the continuing dangers of Genocide ideology and how plagues like corruption have hindered African countries from fulfilling their potential. Some RPF senior cadres have in recent years joined social media platforms like Twitter where they have traced RPF’s formation and the journey of Rwanda’s Liberation. This is the kind of information that Rwanda’s next generation of leaders need to be equipped with if the country’s development trajectory is to be sustained. RPF founders who are mostly expected to form the group that will mentor youth at the proposed Leadership Academy assumed leadership positions at a very young age and faced enormous challenges which they passed with flying colours apart from a few bad apples that went astray. Therefore, there are no better examples or mentors than senior RPF party leaders and the Rwandan youth need to seize this opportunity especially since most of the party leadership is now in the twilight of their careers.
