Bureaucracy, lack of collaboration derailing Africa’s progress — Rwanda’s President Kagame

President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has blamed Africa’s slow development on excessive bureaucracy and a lack of collaboration among leaders and institutions across the continent.

He said these systemic inefficiencies continue to derail meaningful progress, stressing that Africa should be far ahead of where it is currently.

Speaking at the CEO Forum in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Kagame further highlighted Africa’s overdependence on exporting raw materials and talent, only to import finished goods and foreign expertise, as a major setback.

“The systems are so bureaucratic that you imagine they live in another world. Africa should be far ahead of where we are now, and we shouldn’t take any comfort that some progress has been made here or there,” President Kagame said.

“We export raw materials and then import finished products. We export talent and bring in experts to tell us what to do. Why don’t we retain this talent and get them to do what we need ourselves?” he asked.

The Rwandan leader also lamented the seeming culture of African countries’ reliance on external help rather than tapping into their own capacity for development.

“There is a mentality out there—a sort of mindset on our continent—that somebody out there is going to foot the bill of our development, and that has undermined our effort to contribute as much as we can ourselves for our own development,” he noted.

President Kagame stressed that Africa has the means to solve its own problems, but a shift in mindset and genuine cooperation is urgently needed.