![]() But there was no doubt about France's influence over the former Belgian colony. Backstoryįrance's claim that Rwanda was a French-speaking nation was always somewhat disingenuous given that 80% of the population spoke only Kinyarwanda fluently. The judge could not indict Kagame as head of state but he issued international arrest warrants for nine of his closest aides and advised the tribunal trying those behind the genocide to pursue Kagame. The Rwandan inquiry followed allegations by France's leading anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, that in effect accused Rwanda's Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, of bringing mass murder on his own people by allegedly ordering the 1994 assassination of the then president, Juvenal Habyarimana, which marked the start of the genocide. ![]() The latest salvo against French influence comes weeks after the Rwandan government accused more than 30 French politicians, officials and military officers of complicity in the genocide, including the late president, François Mitterrand, and called for their prosecution.Ī two-year investigation by an official commission alleged that French forces in Rwanda committed crimes against humanity and protected those who organised the genocide, helping them to flee the country and escape justice. There is little doubt that a deep loathing of all things French is also an important factor for some of Rwanda's leaders. "English has emerged as a backbone for growth and development not only in the region but around the globe." "French is spoken only in France, some parts of west Africa, parts of Canada and Switzerland," he said. The Rwandan trade and industry minister, Vincent Karega, told Kigali's New Times newspaper that the country is looking beyond the Francophone world. ![]() Close trading ties not only with other east African nations such as Uganda and Kenya but also with South Africa, which has provided investment for luxury hotels and shopping malls, have helped drive an economic boom in Rwanda. The drive towards English is in part financial. Instruction at Kigali's elite Institute of Science and Technology is already in English and it is increasingly the language of instruction in the national university. She studied her PhD in genetic engineering at the University of East Anglia.Įnglish has also become fashionable even among French-speaking young people in the cities, particularly Tutsis, as a means of rejecting Francophone influence and its association with the Hutu regime responsible for the genocide.Īt present the first three years of primary school is in Kinyarwanda after which pupils may choose English or French. Rwanda's minister of education, Daphrosa Gahakwa, grew up in Uganda where she took her O levels. The RPF leadership, dominated by Tutsis raised in exile in Anglophone countries, generally speaks English and not French. The cabinet also decided that all public service workers will receive English instruction.Įnglish was made an official language in Rwanda, alongside French and the indigenous Kinyarwanda, after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) overthrew the Hutu regime and took power in 1994. No timetable has been set to implement the policy, which will face a number of challenges, including finding sufficient teachers who speak English. However, what amounts to an attempt to expel the French language too, consigning it to a few hours a week in schools and increasingly forcing it out of the workings of government, will be badly received in Paris where protection of the language is at the heart of what critics describe as the French obsession with maintaining influence in Africa and which led it to back the Hutu extremist government. Underpinning the move is a long and bitter dispute with France born of its support for the Hutu regime that oversaw the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis, which has seen the French ambassador expelled and the closure of the French cultural centre, international school and radio station. However, the shift to education solely in English is part of a wholesale realignment away from French influence that includes applying to join the Commonwealth - if accepted Rwanda would be only the second member, after Mozambique, that has not been a British colony - and establishing a cricket board.
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