Curtains went up on Sunday for the 27th African Union Summit in Kigali Rwanda, with an emphatic call for leaders to stand together and address the pressing challenges that he continent is going through.
The summit was opened this afternoon by the host president Paul Kagame with a concise message concentrated with calls for unity and for Africa to realize and act on their own problems.
President Kagame revealed that the summit will among others be focusing on “serious business that entails urgent threats to peace and stability on the continent.”
The African leaders will be looking to find a lasting remedy to the young and unstable South Sudan which since late 2013, has been riddled with tribal based civil war.
The fighting resurged late last week, in which over 300 people were killed and thousands of foreigners rushed to flee the country. The unrest has also plunged into doubt a peace deal struck in August 2015 between the rivals President Salva Kiir and his Deputy Riek Machar.
Amidst these new challenges, President Kagame stressed that the purpose of the African union is and should remain unity.
“Whenever we converge on the basis of what unites us, there is a peaceful solution to every problem but when people meet as strangers, even small problems are hard to resolve,” he said.
“Belief in the unity of our continent with an emphasis on integration should never be subject to preconditions or exceptions because lasting solutions always involve everyone.”
Kagame remained the continent leaders that Rwanda itself has been though a lot, but through unity they were able to revive the disintegrating nation.
“22 years ago this country was nearly erased; a history that will forever serve as a testimony to the dangers of division,” he said.
“National unity was the starting point for transformation we have undertaken with good progress. Driven by necessity, Rwandans had to find unconventional solutions to the challenges of reconciliation often through the process of trial and error. The issue of brotherhood cannot be amputated by lines drawn on a map in another century.”
The 27th summit is also expected to elect leadership of the African Union in which Uganda’s former Vice President Dr Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe is looking to head the African Union Commission.
The summit will also focus on the rights of African women and also the ways of internally finding resources to run the works of the Union
“Good ideas were discussed on financing the AU during yesterday’s retreat; we should be the ones to pay for our activities in which everyone has a stake,” said Kagame.
“If African challenges are treated as routine, it means we have accepted to be held back by them forever we must all reject that future.”