Kagame was speaking Thursday in an interactive session with members of the African Union Broadcasting (AUB) gathered in a General Assembly in Kigali.
The Head of State said that African Union has been there for sometime and is about how countries can work together to achieve what they have to do.
“This time we actually have to pay our bills. If you don’t pay your bills you actually end up paying even more than you would had paid directly. The one who pays for you in the end owns you,” he said.
He said that some initiatives of the African Union are not new.
“The 0.2% levy has been defended, argued about and is now very clear as one of the ways forward in being able to pay for our activities. Maybe with time we will realize that we are wasting our own opportunities. We have to do something for ourselves as a continent. African leaders now think it is time to do what we ought to,” he said.
Kagame said that Africans should learn from their past failures and apply lessons learnt.
In Rwanda, he said, having learnt a lot of lessons the hard way, Rwandans are very realistic about their situation and the global issues that affect them.
“We understood that we have to do what is good for us and find out what works. The model we have is as simple as what we want as Rwandans. We want peace, prosperity and security for everybody,” he noted.
Speaking about African refugees, Kagame said that Africans have to confront the issue as it is happening and figure out how to manage it.
“As African countries, we collectively need to find root causes to why our people are leaving to go die or be sold as slaves elsewhere,” he said.
He said that Public policies, however good they may be, if they are still producing people wanting to leave their countries, those policies need to be rethought and fine-tuned.
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