Rwandan President Paul Kagame has a vision. He believes that he can boost the prosperity of his country by transforming it into a linchpin of Africa’s information economy. In his efforts to attract banks and tech companies, he has covered Rwanda with a fiber optic network aimed at bringing broadband Internet into its remotest corners. His efforts to foster a new educational elite and to create a low-corruption, business-friendly environment are all part of the same plan.
It’s an ambitious agenda, and there’s little reason to doubt that Kagame believes in it. (Why would he keep on repeating it otherwise?) Yet his government actively pursues policies that contradict these aims. If you really want to build an information economy, you have to insure that people and companies can create, own, and trade information as they see fit. Yet Rwandan officials retain tight control over what their people say and think, usually citing the country’s dark past of ethnic conflict as a rationale for doing so. Over the past few years, many of the government’s critics — including some journalists — have been silenced, arrested, driven into exile — or killed.
So which one is it going to be — a Google-friendly Rwanda or one firmly in the grip of the thought police?
So which one is it going to be — a Google-friendly Rwanda or one firmly in the grip of the thought police?The idea that there’s a tension between these two images of the country doesn’t come from me. A few years ago, implicitly acknowledging the paradox, the Rwandan government itself approved a series of reformsaimed at opening up space for the media. “In Rwanda, in spite of what outsiders might say, we regard the media as an important partner in our country’s development,” Kagame himself said in 2012. “That is why we have made reform of the media a priority.”
One of the key figures in the reform project was a journalist by the name of Fred Muvunyi, who headed a new body that was supposed to shield reporters from the heavy hand of government.
In 2013, as part of the reforms, the government created the Rwanda Media Commission (RMC). This body, to be staffed primarily by journalists, was supposed to ensure media “self-regulation” based on a professional code of conduct. The idea was to get the government out of the business of micromanaging (and effectively censoring) the media. FULL STORY
