During his two-day state visit to Benin over the weekend, President Kagame signed nine bilateral deals with his Beninese counterpart, President Patrice Talon. As The New Times reported, “among the agreements signed were those related to avoidance of double taxation, agriculture, digital, local governance, sustainable development, military cooperation, commercial and industrial cooperation, tourism, and investment promotion”. Answering a question from a Beninese journalist on the question of military cooperation at the news conference that followed the signing of the agreements, President Kagame spoke, not only about the terrorist threat that Benin and other West African nations faced, he also alluded to the responsibility that African nations had to each other. As he noted, Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) were already in the theatre of war in the Central African Republic, Mozambique and South Sudan working to help stabilise these nations. While discussing the signed agreements with a colleague of mine, he asked a very pertinent question that I think needs to be examined: “why are our brave and gallant women and men getting involved in missions so far from home, risking life and limb”? To come up with an answer to that question I think we need to understand a couple of things; the nature of terrorism, Pan-Africanism (and the idea that we are all on the same boat, we either sail together or sink together), the Cold War Domino Effect Theory (and its modern-day equivalence), the emergence of multipolarism (and its effect on Africa) and how all these things relate to ‘collective and national security’. Let’s start with the nature of terrorism in Africa. When you look at it, whether in Mozambique, in the Sahel, northern Nigeria or eastern DR Congo, you realise that terrorism grows, bit by bit, like a cancer, until it consumes the entire body. You cannot isolate it in one region, buffering the rest of the country from its effects. Its very nature is expansionist. That is what we saw in Cabo Delgado with the ISIS-affiliated al-Shabaab and, I’m pretty sure, that is what President Talon fears will happen in his country. Terrorism, like a tumor, cannot be contained. It must be attacked head on. The question that then follows is, do you have the capacity to do just that? In the words of President Kagame, “we have been building certain capacities, decent capacities, there is no exaggeration there, it is not a lot but enough to deal with some problems, especially when we work with other countries”. His answer leads me to the next aspect, ‘Pan-Africanism’. Or at least the way I define it within the context of state-to-state relations. The fact of the matter is, many African states will not, and cannot, reach their full potential because of their individual inherent challenges. These include landlockedness, population sizes, skilled professionals, weak militaries, lack of natural resources (or the ability to properly utilise the resources they have), weak bureaucracies, foreign intervention, among other challenges. However, as a continent, we have solutions to these structural problems if only we work in tandem. We need to become ‘our brother’s keeper’. As President Kagame said, “you don’t have to have skills you need coming from outside our continent, much as is not mutually exclusive, you could have competences within our continent from friends, from neighbours, still on the continent”. During the Cold War, the Americans came up with the ‘Domino Theory’. It supposed that ‘increases or decreases in democracy in one country tended to spread to neighbouring countries in a domino effect’. And, while I believe that the manner in which this theory was applied by different US administrations was problematic (especially in Africa and Asia), it is my position that instability and state failure is contagious. For example, there is a direct line from the fall of Gaddafi’s Libya to the coup d’états in Mali. Therefore, for African states, as a collective, to even stand a chance, those with certain capacities need to help buttress those without. At the end of the day, unless we work together, we shall continue to be the playground for not only the superpowers of today (the US, China and Russia), but the players of tomorrow (Brazil, Iran, Qatar). If, on the other hand, we cooperate strategically, Africa has an opportunity to own its ‘pole’ in a multipolar world. Now back to the RDF. Addressing his rebel troops in Kiswahili during the Liberation War (1990-94), the then rebel leader Kagame called the then Rwanda Patriotic Army “Msingi wa chama” (the foundation of the Rwanda Patriotic Front party). Today, this fighting force (now called the RDF) is still seen as the foundation of everything that Rwanda, and Rwandans, have built over the last 29 years. Before any tourism, business, mining and manufacturing can take place, security must be assured. This holds true whether at a country, regional or continental level. So, in a nutshell, to answer my friend’s question, our troops get involved in foreign theatres and risk their lives because those theatres aren’t as ‘foreign’ as we’d like to think. It is in our best interests, as a nation, to play our part in stabilising restive regions on our continent. We cannot watch our neighbor’s house in flames and think we are safe and sound in our homes. We have a responsibility to share the firefighting equipment that’s at our disposal. Lest our house catch fire as well. The writer is a socio-political commentator
