“We need to put our house in order together in terms of governance, proper planning and policies so that we use better the resources we have and the resources that are given to us”.

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Addressing the South Korean Press after the official opening of the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness

H.E Paul KGAME, President of the Republic of Rwanda on Aid Effectiveness

Addressing the South Korean Press after the official opening of the 4^th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, H.E Paul Kagame has kindly accepted to answer a question put to him by the NEPAD Agency.   

NEPAD Agency:  Your country Rwanda Mali and South Africa are leading the Busan negotiation process as Sherpas on behalf of the continent to come up with a strong Africa voice to shape a new done for  aid effectiveness  and go beyond aid  to shift to Development Effectiveness.

What Africa have to do to keep it own house in order so that critical issues such as country system, and aid accountability and conditionaliities are fairly addressed in order for the continent to implement the post Busan Agenda in terms of road map.

H.E Paul KAGAME: I understand your point and it is a valid one.  What I have to say on that is that first of all the developing countries and most especially the African countries need to move away from business as usual kind of attitude. Sometimes I feel, and I can take my own country as an example, because of the challenges we have been facing. Sometimes   the attitude is as if anybody owns us anything, is as if we expect to have problems and somebody will come and solves those problems. We need therefore to work very hard first of all as individual countries,  but more importantly  if we can work together and this has a lot to do with the attitude; working hard, working together and at the same time make sure that we bring into play good governance because how we manage our affairs is critical, how we manage notably aid, but even other affairs of our countries,  is very important  and we cannot have anybody manage our affairs and we cannot just say other people should not manage our affairs when we are not managing our affairs properly.

I’m really putting the onus on ourselves to make sure we are the people first of all to do things that needed to be done in order for us to be seen to be working in the right direction and working together and then asking people to support like the discussions here in Busan. It is just a discussion to make sure that flow of aid from the rich to the poor, without necessarily undermining the dignity of the poor and do it in a certain way that there is a full mutual respect on either side. But before that to happen I think there is a lot to have to do on our part that is Africans, that is Rwanda, your country or any other country. We need to get our act together, to put our house in order together in terms of governance, in terms of proper planning, in terms of policies so that we use better the resources we have  and the resources that are given to us.

There is no other magic, this is for us to change our ways and make sure that this is what we need to do.