Carnegie Mellon to open school in Rwanda

The president of Rwanda spoke at Carnegie Mellon on Friday about developing learning… The president of Rwanda spoke at Carnegie Mellon on Friday about developing learning opportunities in his country. Developments in the country have led it to become one of the dominant information hubs in the East African region.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame spoke at CMU’s Rangos Hall to about 500 people. The university’s decision to open a branch campus in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, occasioned the 45-minute lecture.

During the talk, Kagame focused on Rwanda’s and other African nations’ development. He spoke at length about the contrast between the developed and the developing world.

“Often the quick fix to this imbalance has been aid [that] flows from rich nations,” he said. “In many areas, this aid has not been properly used or well-targeted.”

Kagame dismissed aid as a viable solution, saying that instead developing nations must take responsibility for their own affairs to ensure sustained development.

“Our national development agenda is focused on investing in our major and indispensable resource, which is our people,” he said.

Providing education in technology and building communications infrastructure is central to the president’s plan for Rwanda’s sustained long-term development. He was optimistic about the relationship between his administration and CMU.

The school will initially offer a Master of Science in Information Technology program. Students will also work with the Rwandan government on technological research, said Kagame.

Rwandan officials began discussing the deal with CMU in 2008. Operating costs for the new campus are expected to be about $100 million over one decade, with the Rwandan government underwriting the university’s costs.

According to a press release, CMU plans to enroll 40 students in the initial 2012 fall class. By 2017, the university expects to have 150 students in Kigali.

In his introduction of Kagame, CMU President Jared Cohon commented that a major obstacle that Rwanda faces in its development is that Rwandan nationals educated overseas frequently do not return. This leads to a “brain drain” in Rwanda which Cohon said Kagame is determined to end.

“He recognizes that building prosperity for his country and for Africa will depend on creating a knowledge-based economy, and he has set the very ambitious goal of completing this transition by 2020,” Cohon said.

Cohon went on to say that CMU was an ideal partner for Kagame in achieving his goal.

“Like you, we recognize how information and communications technologies are vital to prosperity in the world today,” Cohon said.

Cohon said that CMU students in Rwanda would have to meet the same rigorous admission requirements as do the university’s students in Pittsburgh.

“One thing I can predict with complete confidence: The complaints emanating from Kigali about the hard work and long hours will be just as loud as they are here in Pittsburgh,” Cohon joked.

One audience member asked Kagame, a Tutsi, how he changed his country’s mindset in the wake of the 1994 civil war. During the war, members of the Hutu majority retaliated against the Tutsi minority for Tutsis’ collaboration with Belgian colonialists. He said that by conservative estimates, the war killed more than half a million Rwandans and displaced many more.

“Maybe we’ve learned lessons from tragedy. We’ve learned the hard way,” Kagame said. “And somehow that cloud had a silver lining.”

In his view, the atrocities give the Rwandan people drive to move past their history.

Duhirwe Rushemeza has seen Kagame speak before. A Rwandan artist who now lives in New York, she traveled to Pittsburgh on Friday to hear him speak.

Regarding the president’s statements about confronting the tragedy of 1994 and moving on, Rushemeza said, “He has high hopes for the country. He expects a lot from himself, from other individuals, and that trickles down.”

Outside Rangos Hall, however, not everyone was enthusiastic about the new relationship.

Abot 40 demonstrators chanting, “CMU, shame on you!” and, “We are humans, how about you?” came to Forbes Avenue to oppose the deal between CMU and Kagame’s administration. Many held signs accusing the president of human rights abuses in his own country and of complicity in atrocities that have taken place in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rebecca Cech, a Pitt doctoral student in literature, organized the demonstration against the new partnership, estimated that about 40 people attended the protest.

The daughter of a missionary, Cech grew up in the Congolese territory of North Kivu. Her father worked at a hospital in Rwanguba, 15 miles from the Rwandan border, from when she was 3 years old until she was 13. At that point the political situation forced her family out of the country, she said.

Cech rejected Kagame’s remarks about a “silver lining” in the genocide as standard rhetoric for discussing Rwanda. She voiced skepticism about the portrayal of a Rwandan “success story.”

“What are the actual litmus tests? It’s not just how many women are in Parliament. It’s, ‘Can somebody be oppositional?’” she said, referring to allegations that Kagame’s administration suppresses opposition and limits freedom of the press.