{{President Paul Kagame warned that the slow pace by some member states of the East African Community in executing the principles that have been agreed upon should not be allowed to make the bloc lose sight of what it has set itself to achieve.}}<\/p>\n
\u201cOne good thing is that we are doing better in putting in place standards and benchmarks of what we want to achieve… these benchmarks will always remind us of what is expected of each member,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The president was August 10, speaking to media owners, editors and senior journalists on the sidelines of the two-day 5th East Africa Media Summit in the Rwanda capital.<\/p>\n
He urged the media to play a key role in accelerating the pace of integration in East Africa such as the swift implementation of the Common Market and Customs Union protocols.<\/p>\n
He noted that it was neither right nor fair to accuse any particular EAC member state of being the stumbling block in the rather sluggish implementation of programmes meant to cement regional integration.<\/p>\n
Kagame said there was no way everyone among the five members of the EAC would realize each and every programme at the same pace.<\/p>\n
\u201cImplementation of the regional integration agenda wouldn\u2019t always be same among the member states because of certain existing differences among them. But I can assure you that we are all keeping our eyes on where we want to go, individually and collectively,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He explained that the agreement on the basic principles on what should be done or achieved at what time helps in reducing disparities.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot avoid or wish them (differences between member countries) away… even the European Union is experiencing the same problems though they started much earlier than us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The president added that the level of implementation of the regional integration agenda would differ among countries as even within each separate country the level of understanding these goals differed from one category of people to another.<\/p>\n
He noted that even in Rwanda, level of understanding on EAC issues varied among the Rwandans. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut, as I have said earlier, this should not make us lose sight of what we have set to achieve. This should help us to encourage one another on what we are supposed to do to reach there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
President Kagame criticised Africa\u2019s media for leaving Western media to tell the African story. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are imposing their views on us and want everybody to believe what they are reporting is always correct,\u201d he said addingn that though he respected the freedom of the press, he does not accept blanket criticisms and negative reporting on Africa \u201cby those who want to impose ideas on what other people should believe.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{President Paul Kagame warned that the slow pace by some member states of the East African Community in executing the principles that have been agreed upon should not be allowed to make the bloc lose sight of what it has set itself to achieve.}} \u201cOne good thing is that we are doing better in putting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}