Book Launch: “Transforming Rwanda: Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction”

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• Dr Jean-Paul Kimonyo
• Wednesday 23 October 2019, 12:00-13:30
• Seminar Room S2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Victoria Jones.

Since the end of its genocidal civil war in 1994, Rwanda has embarked on an ambitious, and often controversial, process of reconstruction. Following the exile of the 1959 Rwandan refugees, Kimonyo’s book offers an historical account of the formation and evolution of the RPF and comprehensively analyzes Rwanda’s post-genocide reconstruction process in the political, military, socioeconomic, and cultural arenas.

Kimonyo combines the objectivity of a scholar with the front-row perspective of a participant to provide an unparalleled analysis of the ups and downs of Rwanda’s transformation. Drawing extensively on primary sources, he traces and analyzes the states of reconstruction as they have continued to unfold since the election of Paul Kagame to the presidency.

Jean-Paul Kimonyo’s bio

Dr. Jean-Paul Kimonyo works in the Office of the president of Rwanda as a senior advisor and Rwanda’s focal point for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). Before he was the head of the Strategy Policy Unit in the same office. He is the co-founder of the Centre for Conflict Management at the National University of Rwanda and was its first director.

Kimonyo worked extensively as a post-conflict international consultant mostly for UNDP in Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire and Burundi (lead writer for the Burundi National Human Development Report 2005 (UNDP) on “Consolidation of peace in Burundi”).

His doctoral dissertation on mass participation in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was published in English: “Rwanda’s Popular Genocide: A Perfect Storm” (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016). Kimonyo holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Quebec in Montreal. His book “Transforming Rwanda” was first published in French in 2017 and will be translated in Chinese in 2020.

Comments on the book:

“I strongly recommend Jean-Paul Kimonyo’s book, it offers a very useful insight to the RPF genesis, ideology construction, why it acted and reacted in the way it did. Allows for better understanding of contempory Rwanda.” (Prof. Filip Reyntjens, Twitter, 16 June 2019)

“Jean-Paul Kimonyo’s book allows us to come back to the reality of a country and a people that deserve understanding and consideration.”(Jean-François Dupaquier, Afrikarabia, Nov. 2007) ) http://afrikarabia.com/wordpress/un-livre-pour-comprendre-la-gouvernance-du-rwanda/

This talk is part of the Centre of African Studies Occasional Talks series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Centre of African Studies Occasional Talks
• Seminar Room S2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT

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