Travelogue: Hotel Rwanda, Paul Kagame and A Purpose Driven Nation

Do You Remember Hotel Rwanda? Hotel Rwanda was a film released in 2004 about how Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle ), the manager of Hotel Des Milles Collines, saved 1,268 Tutsis during the 1994 Genocide.

The hotel was also shown in the 2005 film Sometime In April.

I was at the hotel. The actual name of the hotel is Hotel des Mille Collines. The hotel was rebuilt after the war and still remains a melting point of sorts.

Behind me in one of the pictures is the swimming pool that the Tutsis who took refuge in the hotel were forced to drink because there was no water. As I went round the hotel, I played that movie Hotel Rwanda in my head. From the faces I saw at the hotel, the country has healed.

I am quite fascinated by Paul Kagame because everywhere I went, everyone was fascinated by his leadership. How did one man achieve this kind of progress after such a brutal war that killed one million people in 100 days? I got the answer.

In 2003, Paul Kagame came across the book The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. He was so challenged and inspired by the book he decided to make Rwanda the first purpose driven nation on earth.

Paul Kagame set to work. He sleeps only 4 hours a day and works for 15 hours daily. He is a voracious reader. You just have to hear him talk and you will know something drives him.

In just 23 years after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda is the second best place in Africa to do business. You can register your business same day- start in the afternoon and get your business certificate same evening.

There is no minimum amount required to start a business for foreigners. You can't see any dirt on the street. Plastic bags have been banned. No one walks on the street barefooted- it is illegal. You can't wear dirty clothes on the street.

Corruption is zero. Absolutely zero. You can't steal a car- you will be caught. Literacy rate is 97%- the highest in Africa. In Nigeria, it's around 60%. An average taxi driver in Rwanda has secondary school education. Life expectancy rate is 66 years. Nigeria is 55 years.

There is something working well for this country and it started from the leadership. I set out to find out how Paul Kagame thinks and the story behind this African success and bought these 8 books from a Kigali bookstore. The most fascinating for me is Kagame by Francois Soudan.

I read that book on the plane back to Nigeria. It adorns my library and is one of my best books ever.

(Memories from my January 2017 trip to Rwanda)

Bayo Adeyinka

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