Tom Paulson's Blogs
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10 Reasons Why Rwanda Can’t Be Described in a Sound-Bite
I’ve just returned from a whirlwind fact-finding tour of Rwanda with the International Reporting Project. I can now report with great confidence that these Rwandan school children are enjoying themselves: Beyond that, I have to admit I am still trying to process the experience. Rwanda is a tough country to get a handle on. Here are some reasons why: 1. Rwanda has been ranked by the World Bank as one of the best countries in Africa, or anywhere, for doing business. 2. Rwanda has been ranked by Reporters Without Borders as one of the worst countries in the world for free speech and media independence. 3. Transparency International has ranked Rwanda as having low rates of corruption and one of the best records in East Africa specifically for cracking down on bribery. 4. Rwanda’s political system is frequently ranked as not free and de facto one-party rule....
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Scenes From Rwanda
I’m leaving Rwanda today, heading home as you read this, but I will be posting more about my trip next week. I will take a closer look at a number of projects (including some run out of Seattle) that are helping to make this once devastated nation what many see as “Africa’s success story,” a harder look at President Paul Kagame’s responses to allegations of suppression of the media free speech and many more stories about this tiny but amazing country. Tom Paulson is the host of Humanosphere.org, an online news site at KPLU, a Seattle public radio station affiliated with National Public Radio. Paulson traveled to Rwanda an a Gatekeeper Editors trip with the International Reporting Project (IRP).
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A Chat With Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame
Rwandan President Paul KagamePhoto: Tom Paulson Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is, like his country, very pleasant but enigmatic. I got a chance to talk with him for two hours today, along with a dozen or so other journalists here on a trip sponsored by the International Reporting Project. Before I get into details, let me say that Kagame is quite charming and personable. He doesn’t act at all like a war criminal or dictator, which are some of the charges his most strident critics throw at him. Kagame comes off more like a professor, making his points at length, with a chuckle here or some slightly irritable admonishment there. Still, we had a job to do and tried to get at some of the more critical issues swirling around this architect of an “African success story” – beginning with the perception some have that...
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Walking the Media Tightrope in Rwanda
There are few simple stories in Rwanda. There are official positions, which are often stated simply and unilaterally. But if you dig deeper, you often find multiple and complex story lines seething just below the surface. Like the “We are all Rwandans” comment we hear so often. What this can mean is that the ethnic tension between the Hutus and Tutsis, which spawned the 1994 genocide, persists but is generally taboo to talk about. By some accounts, this sense of ethnic division may even be on the increase due to the current government’s tendency to favor Tutsis. IRP journalists interviewing in northern Rwanda.Photo: Tom PaulsonWe are journalists exploring Rwanda through the International Reporting Project. And this is a country notorious in the West for its authoritarian tendency to put journalists in jail, fine them or otherwise punish critical commentary. Some even end up dead. ...
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Mountain Gorillas With Journalists in the Midst
No visit to Rwanda is complete without seeing the mountain gorillas. Here’s one who came to have a closer look at us. After a whirlwind week of meeting with Rwandan officials, business leaders, local journalists, activists and others in the capital city of Kigali, we took off for a few days to journey high up into the Birunga mountain range to the northern town of Kinigi, near the Congo and Ugandan borders. I’m traveling with a group of American journalists sponsored by the International Reporting Project. Our aim is to gain perspective on this country so many associate only with its genocidal past – but which many others today dub an “African success story.” Rwanda is a stunningly beautiful country. There are many signs of economic progress, but it is still plagued by widespread poverty. Gorilla trekking is expensive and brings in a lot...
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Rwanda’s Future Could Depend Upon a Really Good Cup of Coffee
Farmers sorting coffee beans at a Technoserve cooperative.Most Rwandans are poor farmers. And most depend upon growing coffee for half or more of their annual income. A four-year-old social enterprise project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation appears to be helping farmers significantly increase their income by taking better advantage of this mountainous nation’s fairly unique ability to grow the best coffee in the world. By geographical happenstance — very high elevations and wet, tropical weather – Rwanda’s unlike almost any other place when it comes to growing coffee. But until recently, few coffee farmers here were making the most of their advantage. “Now we’re seeing some farmers earning up to three times more than they were before we started working with them,” said Paul Stewart, regional director of the Technoserve Coffee Initiative in Rwanda. Overall, Stewart said, the incomes of participating...
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Rwanda Is Empowering Girls, With a Little Help From Seattle
The first class of the Rwanda Girls Initiative, launched by two Seattle women.It has become a mantra in aid and development circles today to say that empowering girls is the single most effective means of fighting poverty, inequity and any number of ills in poor countries. This is one of the international community’s top priorities, for good reason. But saying and doing are two different things. Talk is cheap, they say. Paul Kagame’s government in Rwanda is clearly walking the talk on girls and women — and a number of Seattle organizations are assisting in the gender revolution happening here. I heard Kagame speak at the Clinton Global Initiative on gender equity in late September. I was in New York City covering a United Nations meeting on global health but broke away to attend some of the Clinton confab and was there when...
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Transforming Kigali, Murder Mystery Site and Hotel Rwanda
Overlooking Kigali, RwandaThe first thing a seasoned traveler might notice about Rwanda’s capital city Kigali is how clean and ordered it is, as compared to many other cities in Sub-Saharan Africa (or anywhere, for that matter). Not much garbage and no plastic bags flying around. They’ve been banned here. The grass and foliage in the traffic medians are well-tended. All the motorcyclists wear helmets and travel at the speed limit. People smile a lot and ask you how they can help. You can see why Rwanda is sometimes referred to as the “Switzerland of Africa” (except for that smiling and helping part. The Swiss could take a lesson). What makes this all the more impressive is that the Swiss haven’t had to recover from a violent civil war in which the French-speaking Swiss tried to exterminate the German-speaking Swiss. But that’s...
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Re:Visiting Rwanda: A Closer Look at an African Success Story
Flickr, extremeboh Gorillas in the mist. Mass genocide. The movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and maybe coffee. Those are the things most people say when Ralph Coolman asks them what they know about Rwanda — a tiny central African nation that has had (and is still having) a profound impact on the West’s view of Africa, on the international community’s view of itself and the whole concept of aid and development. Seattle is connected to Rwanda in a number of ways, beginning with the country’s role as a major producer of high quality coffee beans for Starbucks and Costco. A number of local humanitarian organizations, as well as social enterprise business ventures, are active there. Coolman, a Seattle man and my neighbor in the Green Lake sub-district of Tangletown, works with a girls’ education project launched there by two exceptional Seattle women, Suzanne Sinegal McGill...
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