Eighteen-year-old Daniel Muhoza emerged as the hero, scoring a spectacular overhead kick in the 97th minute to hand the Rwandan giants their second regional title, adding to the trophy they won in 1998 against Zanzibar’s Mlandege. The victory also capped a flawless campaign in which Rayon Sports won every match and claimed the tournament’s $30,000 top prize.
Roared on by a capacity home crowd, Rayon Sports made a bright start and broke the deadlock in the 29th minute. Herman Junior Kameni reacted quickest inside the six-yard box to divert the ball past Gor Mahia goalkeeper Bryne Omondi and give the hosts a deserved lead.
Gor Mahia came back stronger after the break and equalised in the 53rd minute through Musa Sharif Sirengo, setting up a tense finish as both sides searched for a winner.
Neither team could find the breakthrough in the remainder of normal time, sending the final into extra time.
Seven minutes into the additional period, in the 97th minute, Muhoza produced a stunning overhead kick that beat Omondi and proved to be the match-winning goal, sparking wild celebrations among the home supporters.
Rayon Sports were reduced to 10 men after a late red card in extra time but held firm to secure a famous victory on home soil.
Prime Minister Justin Nsengiyumva presented the CECAFA Kagame Cup trophy to Rayon Sports after the final whistle as the club celebrated its first regional title in 28 years.
The triumph marks only the second CECAFA Kagame Cup title in Rayon Sports’ history and completes a remarkable tournament in which the club won every match and conceded just two goals.
Rayon Sports goalkeeper Junior Dande was named Goalkeeper of the Tournament after an outstanding campaign, while Emmanuel Nshimiyimana received the Most Valuable Player award for his influential performances throughout the competition.
For Gor Mahia, the defeat extends their wait for another regional title. The Kenyan side last lifted the trophy in 1985 and have now lost successive CECAFA Kagame Cup finals after also finishing runners-up in 2015. Despite the defeat, they received $20,000 in prize money as runners-up.
In the third-place playoff, Sudan’s Al Hilal defeated South Sudan’s Jamus SC 2-1 to claim the bronze medal and the tournament’s $10,000 third-place prize.
Rayon Sports ended a 28-year wait for the CECAFA Kagame Cup title after defeating Kenya’s Gor Mahia 2-1.Prime Minister Justin Nsengiyumva presented the CECAFA Kagame Cup trophy to Rayon Sports after the final whistle as the club celebrated its first regional title in 28 years. The victory also capped a flawless campaign in which Rayon Sports won every match and claimed the tournament’s $30,000 top prize.
By the time the dust settled, 224 people were dead, including 12 Americans, and more than 4,500 were wounded. Nairobi accounted for the vast majority of the casualties: 213 killed and roughly 4,000 injured, most of them Kenyan office workers, students and bus commuters who had nothing to do with American diplomacy. Dar es Salaam recorded 11 dead and 85 injured.
What has aged worse than the rubble is how avoidable much of it was. Government investigators, and the ambassador who ran the Nairobi mission that day, later laid out in painstaking detail how a warning that reached Washington months earlier went unheeded, and how the embassy itself sat exposed on one of the city’s busiest corners, with no buffer between the public street and the chancery walls.
Nairobi accounted for the vast majority of the casualties: 213 killed and roughly 4,000 injured, most of them Kenyan office workers, students and bus commuters.
Al-Qaeda’s justification for the attacks was laid out months earlier. Osama bin Laden had grown increasingly hostile toward Washington over the US military presence in Saudi Arabia and Somalia, and sought to force American personnel out of the region.
In February 1998, he and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad announced a “World Islamic Front” and issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Americans and their allies “wherever and whenever they find them”. Prosecutors later called the East Africa bombings his first major attempt to carry that out. Bin Laden was indicted in the US that November.
The Tanzania blast went off nearly simultaneously, to the one in Kenya on August 7, 1998, leaving 11 people dead.
A cable that went unanswered
Prudence Bushnell, then US ambassador to Kenya, had flagged the danger well before the bombing. In a cable to Washington on December 24, 1997, more than seven months before the attack, she laid out reports of terrorist and criminal threats against the mission and stressed that the embassy’s lack of standoff distance from the road left it acutely exposed. She asked for backing to build a new, more secure chancery.
The response, in January 1998, was that the post’s existing “medium” threat rating for political violence and terrorism was appropriate, and that the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations was not planning a new office building. Washington offered a security assessment team instead, and the exchange ultimately produced a reduction in embassy staff, with some personnel reassigned to Pretoria rather than the building itself being replaced or moved.
U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, center, is helped by unidentified men, as she is evacuated from the area of the U.S. Embassy following an explosion in downtown Nairobi, Friday, Aug. 7, 1998.
Bushnell has spent the years since turning that decision into a wider argument about institutional failure. In her 2018 memoir, Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience: My Story of the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings, she traces how intelligence agencies and policymakers had already been tracking Osama bin Laden’s Nairobi cell since 1996, yet the threat assessments and bureaucratic priorities in Washington failed to translate that scrutiny into protection on the ground. She has also noted that no congressional hearings followed the bombings and that the national security establishment conducted no broad after-action review. At the time, Congress was in recess, and Washington’s attention that week was consumed by the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
What the official inquiry found
The State Department’s own investigation, an Accountability Review Board chaired by retired admiral William Crowe, reached a more measured but still damning conclusion in January 1999. It found that security systems at both embassies generally met, and in places exceeded, the standard requirements set for posts rated at medium or low threat, but that those standards had simply never been built to withstand a large vehicle bomb. It also found that both the intelligence community and State Department policymakers had leaned too heavily on narrow, tactical intelligence to gauge the threat level at individual posts, rather than weighing the broader strategic picture building around al-Qaeda.
Despite documenting these systemic gaps, the Board stopped short of finding any individual government employee derelict in their duty, a conclusion that let the officials who turned down Bushnell’s request for a new chancery escape personal accountability, even as the report acknowledged the standoff problem directly contributed to the scale of the Nairobi casualties.
In Dar es Salaam, the picture was different. The Marine Security Guard detachment there had run bomb-response drills in the months before the attack and mobilised within minutes once the blast occurred, a response the review board credited for helping contain the chaos. The main operational failure flagged in Tanzania was logistical: Washington’s Foreign Emergency Support Team was delayed 24 hours in departing after a late decision to add a second aircraft, though the delay did not end up affecting the immediate crisis response.
Scene of the Tanzania bomb blast.
The aftermath that reshaped US diplomatic security
The bombings forced a rethink of how American missions abroad are built and guarded. Congress approved roughly $1.4 billion for new, more secure embassy construction, and the Diplomatic Security Service saw a 25 percent increase in staffing in the years that followed. Regional security officers were given new authority, reporting directly to ambassadors rather than through a longer chain of command. The families of victims also pushed for the creation of the State Department’s Office of Casualty Assistance in 1999, to support the relatives of Americans killed or injured overseas, an office whose recent closure Congressional leaders have criticised as a disservice to the legacy of the 1998 victims.
But as Bushnell has argued in the years since, much of that institutional memory faded fast. Three years later, the September 11 attacks eclipsed East Africa’s bombings in the American public consciousness, turning what should have been a foundational case study in ignored warnings into what she has called “little more than a historical footnote” in Washington.
Compensation, and the gap that remains
American victims and their families pursued compensation for years through US courts, arguing that Sudan and Iran had provided material support to al-Qaeda before the bombings. Federal judges awarded them billions of dollars in default judgments from 2014 onward, upheld on appeal in 2017, though sovereign immunity protections made actually collecting on those judgments difficult. That changed in 2020, when Sudan’s transitional government, seeking removal from Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, agreed to pay $335 million to settle claims from the 1998 bombings alongside other attacks, including the USS Cole bombing.
Margaret Achieng, who lost her daughter to the August 7, 1998 bombing of US Embassy in Nairobi seen praying at the August 7th Memorial Park in 2019.
The initial deal drew criticism for paying naturalised US citizens far less than those who held citizenship at the time of the attack, one advocacy estimate put the gap at roughly 8 percent, prompting Congress to pass the Sudan Claims Resolution Act that December, adding $150 million to narrow the disparity. According to a US Government Accountability Office review, the State Department ultimately found 78 people eligible for compensation under the Act, with individual payments ranging from $170,000 to $10 million.
For Kenyan and Tanzanian victims, who made up the overwhelming majority of the dead and wounded, the picture remains far less resolved. Of the 224 people killed, only 12 were American; most of the rest were Kenyans and Tanzanians killed on their own streets or at desks in nearby buildings, with 44 locally hired embassy staff among the dead. US law generally allows lawsuits against state sponsors of terrorism only on behalf of US citizens, government employees or contractors, which excludes most ordinary Kenyan bystanders from the same legal route available to American victims and locally hired embassy staff.
The blast on August 7, 1998 at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killed more than 200 people. Kenyan security guards keep watch on August 8, 1998, at the scene of explosion.
Survivors such as Douglas Sidialo, blinded in the Nairobi blast, have spent years appealing directly to Washington, including during President Barack Obama’s 2015 visit to Kenya, for compensation on humanitarian grounds. US officials have said Washington spent tens of millions of dollars assisting victims and families in the years after the bombing, but campaigners describe that assistance as ad hoc rather than a structured scheme comparable to what American victims eventually secured.
Doreen Oport, an American employee of the Nairobi embassy who was badly burned in the blast, put the disparity in blunt terms when the 2020 settlement terms became public:
“It’s unfair when they want to make us feel of a lesser value than Americans. It basically sets a value of human lives, both American and Kenyan… when basically, if it was not for Foreign Service Nationals doing the work, then these embassies or consulates would not stand. The work continues. Human lives should not have a value of who gets what and who doesn’t get what. We are all the same.”
Twenty-eight years on, that imbalance remains the East Africa bombings’ most visible unfinished business, as the legal and compensation framework continues to treat American and Kenyan lives lost in the same attack differently.
American Ambassador to Kenya Prudence Bushnell is overcome by emotion after laying a wreath at the site of the Nairobi U.S. Embassy bombing Wednesday, Aug. 12, 1998.
Marking the day in Nairobi
In Kenya, the memory has not faded the same way. The site of the old embassy on Haile Selassie Avenue is now the August 7th Memorial Park, opened in 2001, with a wall bearing the names of those who died. Survivors, victims’ families and government officials gather there every year to lay wreaths and light candles. Kenya’s National Counter Terrorism Centre typically marks the day with a renewed public pledge to prevent future attacks, and current and former US ambassadors have made a practice of attending the commemoration. Then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid a wreath at the memorial in 2021, and the US mission has continued the tradition at senior levels since.
For Bushnell, who returned to Kenya for the 20th and 25th anniversaries, the park itself has become part of the story she tells about recovery. Reflecting on the site in 2023, she called it “a green oasis on a busy street corner,” and the visible result of a Kenyan and American community that rebuilt after the attack and helped each other heal. Twenty-eight years on, the physical wound has become a green space in the middle of the city. The bureaucratic failure that helped cause it remains a cautionary tale in how governments weigh warnings against the cost of acting on them.
In a statement issued on Friday, the ICRC said the operation took place between August 6 and 7 at the request of the parties and in line with the Doha Mechanism they signed in September 2025.
According to the humanitarian organisation, the 15 individuals voluntarily agreed to take part in the transfer.
They departed Beni in North Kivu on the evening of August 6 and travelled through Uganda, which facilitated their passage, before arriving in Rutshuru Territory on August 7, where they were handed over to AFC/M23.
The ICRC said the operation was conducted in coordination with health authorities and under strict Ebola prevention measures, including the deployment of a Uganda Red Cross ambulance to respond to any medical emergencies.
“We hope that this operation will bring some comfort to families who have been separated from their loved ones for so long and that it will pave the way for further detainee release operations, as agreed by the parties during various negotiations, bringing hope to populations affected by the armed conflicts,” said Stephanie Eller, the ICRC’s Head of Operations in Kinshasa.
Under the Doha Process, the ICRC is acting as a neutral intermediary in response to requests from the parties, in particular regarding the safe transport and handover of detainees.
The latest operation follows an earlier humanitarian mission in May 2025, when the ICRC accompanied convoys carrying several hundred disarmed members of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), the Congolese National Police, and their families from Goma to Kinshasa.
In a judgment delivered at the Malindi High Court on Friday, Justice Mugure Thande declared that holding the next presidential election on any date other than the second Tuesday of August 2026 would contravene constitutional provisions governing the election cycle.
The judge, however, suspended the implementation of the ruling until after the 2027 General Election, allowing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to proceed with preparations for the planned polls.
Justice Thande ruled that the Constitution requires presidential elections to be held in the fifth year after an election, not after the completion of a full five-year presidential term.
She said the interpretation of Article 136(2)(a) of the Constitution means the next presidential election should have taken place on the second Tuesday of August 2026, which falls within the fifth year after the August 2022 presidential election.
“The correct interpretation of Article 136(2)(a) of the Constitution is that the second Tuesday in the fifth year before the next presidential election must mean August 11, 2026,” the judge ruled.
The court also found that the Constitution does not guarantee the President a fixed five-year term, stating that the timing of elections takes precedence over the length of the presidential tenure.
The ruling followed a petition challenging the date set for Kenya’s next General Election, with petitioners arguing that the Constitution required the polls to be held in 2026.
While the court agreed with the petitioners’ interpretation, it suspended the declaration that the 2027 election date would be invalid, citing concerns that overturning the current election schedule could create uncertainty and instability.
The decision means Kenya’s 2027 elections will proceed as planned, despite the court’s finding that the Constitution would have required an earlier election date.
William Ruto took the oath of office as Kenya’s fifth President on September 13, 2022. He is among candidates who have declared interest in running for the presidency in the next election.
The latest enforcement action, announced on Thursday, marks the fourth list of local manufacturers affected by the nationwide operation. Rwanda FDA had previously closed 101 manufacturers in the first phase, followed by another eight in the second and 27 in the third.
The newly closed manufacturers are INNOPRO Ltd, Rwamagana Banana Wine CPC Company Ltd, Inganzo Flower Drinks Ltd, ALKO Vintage R Ltd, CFRDTA Ltd, J.H Production Ltd, GACELEMUTERI Ltd, Urakire Business Center Ltd, WIPROCO, Ibyiwacu Product Ltd, EMEFRA Company Ltd and USALAMA Ltd.
Their products include a range of banana-based alcoholic beverages, ginger-flavoured alcoholic drinks, wines and other locally produced alcoholic beverages.
In a public announcement, Rwanda FDA said all manufacturing licenses associated with the facilities had been revoked with immediate effect and ordered the withdrawal of all products originating from the affected manufacturers.
The regulator instructed manufacturers to initiate a full product recall, work with distributors to retrieve products already supplied to retailers and consumers, and submit recall reports within three working days.
Distributors and retailers were ordered to immediately stop selling and distributing the affected products and return remaining stock to their suppliers, while consumers were advised to stop consuming the listed beverages immediately.
Rwanda FDA also directed that all advertisements and promotional materials for alcoholic beverages produced by manufacturers listed in the first, second, third and fourth enforcement notices be removed without delay.
“Non-compliance with all the above will result in measures under applicable regulatory provisions,” the regulator warned, adding that additional lists of manufacturers could be published as inspections and regulatory enforcement continue.
The latest action comes a day after the government suspended the importation of 52 alcoholic beverage brands from international markets, including Gilbeys Gin, Konyagi, Kiwingu and 49 other brands, and ordered their immediate nationwide recall.
The suspended products originate from Burundi, India, Kenya, Poland, Tanzania and Uganda, extending the crackdown beyond locally manufactured alcoholic beverages.
The ongoing enforcement campaign is part of government efforts to remove unsafe alcoholic beverages from the market and protect public health.
Speaking to IGIHE earlier this week, Minister of Health Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana said investigations had established links between unsafe alcoholic drinks and more than 50 deaths recorded between January and July.
He added that more than 500 people sought medical treatment after consuming the drinks, over 100 people lost their eyesight, and a nationwide assessment identified nearly 11,000 people struggling with alcohol addiction.
INNOPRO Ltd’s manufacturing plant in Rulindo District, Northern Province, Rwanda, is among those closed in the ongoing crackdown.
The new Airworthiness Directive (AD), issued on Thursday, applies to an estimated 471 U.S.-registered Boeing 737 MAX 8, MAX 9 and MAX 8-200 aircraft. The directive takes effect on September 10.
According to the FAA, the inspections were prompted by reports of cracks in the bear strap and fuselage skin around the forward upper corner of the forward galley door cutout, located near the forward service door on the right side of the aircraft.
“The FAA is issuing this AD to address cracks in the fuselage skin and bear strap, which may lead to the inability of the principal structural element to sustain limit loads and adversely affect the structural integrity of the airplane,” the agency said.
Airlines have been instructed to inspect the affected area based on each aircraft’s usage and repair any cracks before returning the airplane to service. However, the FAA did not ground the affected aircraft, saying the inspection intervals provide multiple opportunities to detect damage before it poses a safety risk.
Boeing said it has completed an engineering analysis to determine the cause of the cracking and is developing design changes to prevent similar issues in the future.
“This issue has not been observed on the 737 MAX fleet, but Boeing extended the inspections to 737 MAX airplanes as the model shares a similar design and build process,” the company said. “We support both directives and continue to support our airline customers.”
The latest directive adds to Boeing’s ongoing safety challenges. In 2019, the FAA ordered inspections of certain Boeing 737-700, 737-800 and 737-900 aircraft after structural cracks were found in a component linking the fuselage to the wings.
Last month, the FAA also proposed another airworthiness directive requiring inspections of seat assemblies on 453 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft over concerns they may have been installed incorrectly.
Boeing has remained under heightened regulatory scrutiny since a door plug detached from an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 shortly after takeoff in January 2024. Investigators later found that four bolts intended to secure the door plug were missing when the aircraft was delivered to the airline in October 2023.
The new Airworthiness Directive (AD), issued on Thursday, applies to an estimated 471 U.S.-registered Boeing 737 MAX 8, MAX 9 and MAX 8-200 aircraft.
Makolo made the remarks during an interview with Royal FM on Thursday, following reports that Italy is exploring partnerships with several African countries as part of a broader European strategy to manage irregular migration.
“There is no agreement yet. We’re still in discussion,” Makolo said, adding that one of the key ideas under consideration is building on Rwanda’s existing Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) in Gashora.
The ETM, established in 2019 in partnership with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), temporarily hosts vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees evacuated from Libya while their cases are processed for voluntary return to their home countries or resettlement elsewhere.
Makolo explained that the discussions focus on providing a safe place for people fleeing conflict or persecution.
“One of the ideas that we’re discussing is around the Emergency Transit Mechanism that we have in Gashora, a safe place for families who are stranded, who have nowhere else to go, who are in danger for various reasons,” she revealed.
Asylum seekers hosted under the arrangement receive medical care, psychosocial support and skills training while awaiting decisions on their future.
According to Makolo, Rwanda’s willingness to engage in migration partnerships is rooted in its own history of displacement and refugee return.
“Rwanda has always been involved in migration in many ways,” she said, pointing to the country’s own history of displacement and return following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. “Because of that experience, we’re also a welcoming country. We understand people who have had to run away with nothing and then come back and rebuild their lives.”
She pointed to Rwanda’s longstanding refugee policy, noting that the country currently hosts more than 100,000 refugees, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, who are allowed to work, access healthcare and integrate into communities while under protection.
Makolo said Rwanda has worked with international organisations for decades to provide protection to people forced to flee their homes, and sees migration cooperation as part of its contribution to addressing a global challenge.
“Irregular migration is a global problem, and Rwanda has always done our part as a member of the international community,” she noted.
She added that the Gashora programme has already demonstrated its effectiveness.
“We’ve had thousands of those come in, and a lot of them have left, have been resettled to third countries, and that has worked really well. It has saved a lot of lives, a lot of families, and we can do more of this.”
While acknowledging that migration partnerships often attract criticism, Makolo defended Rwanda’s continued engagement on the issue.
“There will always be criticism,” she said. “But we know that we’re doing this for the right reasons. We want to be part of the global solution to a big problem.”
She argued that Rwanda’s previous migration partnership with the United Kingdom, which was cancelled after the new British government scrapped the policy, was fundamentally about providing protection and opportunities for people in need.
“There’s nothing wrong with giving people a home and ensuring that there are resources provided so people can rebuild their lives,” Makolo reiterated.
Makolo also stressed that Rwanda wants to help reduce the dangers faced by African migrants undertaking perilous journeys through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean Sea.
“We don’t want Africans making dangerous journeys across the desert and dying in the Mediterranean,” she remarked. “We want young Africans to be happy to live in their continent, and to contribute to building this continent together.”
According to Italian reports published on August 4, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government is seeking to establish pilot migrant return hubs in third countries as part of a wider European strategy to improve the management of irregular migration.
Italy has indicated that Rwanda is among three African countries, alongside Uganda and Ghana, under consideration for pilot return centres that would be jointly managed by European countries and funded by the European Union.
The governments of Rwanda and Italy are in talks on a potential migration partnership, Government Spokesperson Yolande Makolo has confirmed, saying discussions are ongoing and no agreement has yet been reached.
According to performance targets set by the Ministry of Infrastructure (MININFRA), the phase had reached 14.48% completion at the beginning of the financial year. Progress is expected to rise to 34.14% in the first quarter, 45.39% in the second quarter, and 67.36% in the third quarter, before reaching the 75.4% target by June 2027.
To meet the target, Bugesera Airport Company plans to increase the pace of construction by introducing two daily shifts and extending works into the night.
The company will also undertake preparations for the airport’s eventual operations, including building the capacity of personnel who will work at the facility and coordinating different institutions involved in its operations.
MININFRA’s performance targets did not disclose the budget allocated for this phase of the airport project.
Airport access road expected to reach 50%
Alongside airport construction, the access road connecting to Bugesera International Airport is expected to reach 50% completion during the 2026/27 financial year.
The road project has been allocated more than Rwf3.26 billion for the year, which will support activities including compensation payments, commencement of construction works, and completion of studies for a proposed toll collection system.
The plans indicate that authorities are considering introducing toll fees for road users, although details on the proposed charges and payment mechanism have not yet been disclosed.
Power projects to support airport operations
Two electricity infrastructure projects linked to the airport development are also included in the government’s 2026/27 targets.
The Bugesera Industrial Park substation, with a capacity of 3x30MVA and 110/30kV, is expected to progress from 61.23% completion to full completion during the financial year. The project has been allocated more than Rwf3.55 billion.
Meanwhile, the 110kV transmission line connecting Bugesera Industrial Park to the airport is expected to move from 53.42% completion to 100%, with Rwf4.55 billion allocated to the project.
Combined, the access road, electricity substation and transmission line supporting the airport have been allocated at least Rwf 11.37 billion during the financial year.
Bugesera International Airport is designed with a 4,200-metre runway. In its first phase, the facility is expected to handle up to seven million passengers annually and 150,000 tonnes of cargo. A second phase, planned for completion in 2032, is expected to expand capacity to 14 million passengers per year.
Ruhamya graduated alongside fellow Ugandan cadet Bakira Ruyondo, joining a group of officers who completed the academy’s rigorous military training programme on Wednesday, August 5, 2026.
The training equips cadets with skills in military leadership, command, and operational planning as they prepare for roles as officers in their respective armed forces.
Gen Muhoozi recently shared images of his son during his time at Sandhurst, including a comparison between Ruhamya’s training experience and his own time at the academy 27 years ago.
The UPDF chief, who is President Yoweri Museveni’s son, also graduated from Sandhurst in 2000 after joining Uganda’s military in 1999. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant following his training.
Ruhamya joins a growing number of UPDF officers trained at Sandhurst, one of the world’s leading military academies, which has produced officers for the British Army and armed forces of several countries, including Jordan, Oman, Bahrain, Botswana, and Nigeria.
The academy is also known for training members of royal families and future military leaders from across the world.
Ruhamya (second from left) joins a growing number of UPDF officers trained at Sandhurst,The training equips cadets with skills in military leadership, command, and operational planning as they prepare for roles as officers in their respective armed forces.
In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the Ministry in charge of Emergency Management (MINEMA) said the latest group, the 24th to arrive under the programme, was received in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The group comprises 68 Sudanese, 66 Eritreans, 26 South Sudanese, 15 Ethiopians and two Somalis.
According to the ministry, the asylum seekers will be accommodated at the Gashora Transit Centre in Bugesera District, which hosts other evacuees who previously arrived in Rwanda under the humanitarian initiative.
The Emergency Transit Mechanism was established in September 2019 through a partnership between the Government of Rwanda, UNHCR and the African Union to provide temporary protection to vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers evacuated from Libya while durable solutions, including resettlement, are pursued.
MINEMA said that since the programme began, Rwanda has received more than 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers from Libya.
Of these, 2,681 have been successfully resettled in third countries, including Canada (927), France (332), the United States (325), Sweden (297), Finland (271), Norway (229), Germany (132), the Netherlands (94) and Belgium (72).
The ministry reaffirmed Rwanda’s commitment to providing protection to people fleeing conflict and persecution, saying the country remains committed to offering refuge to people in need.
The group comprises 68 Sudanese, 66 Eritreans, 26 South Sudanese, 15 Ethiopians and two Somalis.The asylum seekers will be accommodated at the Gashora Transit Centre in Bugesera District, which hosts other evacuees who previously arrived in Rwanda under the humanitarian initiative.
