This week in the Great Lakes: Rwanda expands beyond gorilla tourism
(Read article summary)A roundup of this week's news from Africa's Great Lakes region, from Rwanda's shift to English language education and Uganda's missing journalist to allegations of corruption by Congolese generals in the nation's gold mining industry.
Kigali, Rwanda
Welcome to the first of my weekly Great Lakes news roundups, which I'll publish every Friday in conjunction with the Christian Science Monitor's Africa Monitor blog, a daily must-read for what's happening across the continent. If you see important, interesting or downright quirky news, send it my way.
In Rwanda, the shift to English language education has the country looking abroad for teachers. The World Bank gives Rwanda $70 million to reduce the student-teacher ratio, now 63:1. The Dutch consider cutting aid, given this summer’s troublesome news cycle. This after the Dutch, in 2008, froze direct budget support because of Rwandan dealings in Congo – the latest allegations of which the government denies.
On Saturday, Rwanda donated $1 million to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, joining 8 other countries who both give to and receive from the fund. On Sunday, the country inked a $379 million deal with the Global Fund. And tourism may grow beyond gorillas. “We’d like to show people not just the genocide, but Rwanda’s history before colonization, before the genocide,” the head of tourism said.
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