He was speaking during the ‘Meet the President’ session at Intare Conference Arena, where he met over 2,000 young professionals from across the country and the Diaspora.
Observing that drugs were dangerous to the individual’s health and to the health of the country, the Head of State told the Rwandan youth that they owed it to themselves to join hands and make sure the issue was squarely addressed.
“Why on earth would you want to get wasted?” Kagame remarked on drug abuse amongst the youth.
“The country is your family. When you’re not well as an individual, the country is not well. When the country is not well, you as an individual are not well,”
“If you’re not doing drugs as an individual, make sure even the person you call a friend, a relative does not use drugs. It’s your responsibility, do something,” Kagame advised.
{{Kagame encourages youth to innovate
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President Kagame further urged the youth to push themselves harder and make use of their brains, as the country was not short of problems and could use many innovative ideas, to deal with them.
“Ask yourself, what is it that I can do to address problems myself or the country is faced with. If you do not exercise your brain it dies. If you don’t succeed today, or tomorrow, there is no harm. Keep trying, you may succeed at the 10th trial,” President Kagame counseled.
He told the youth to look at failure differently, pick lessons and learn why it didn’t work out so to try something else.
“It does not come automatically; you have to work at it.” Kagame remarked.
On opportunities, the head of State cautioned the youth that there was no shortcut. He observed that his job was to work with the government and other institutions to make sure as many opportunities were created as humanely possible and that every Rwandan, no matter their background, can access them.
“There is no shortcut. I cannot promise young people that you will wake up and have a job. We are the ones who have to chase opportunities. Opportunities will not chase us,” he added.
“We want a country with the freedom to realize your aspirations to be whatever you want to be. But we have to remember that as you want to exercise your legitimate, legal freedoms, you have to make sure you are not infringing on someone else’s freedom,” Kagame told the youth.
Overall the session focused on key areas of health, education and exercising skills through innovation and creativity in building the country.
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