Addis Abeba, 31 January, 2010
President Kagame has concluded his visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where he has been attending, along with more than 25 African other heads of State and Government, the 16th Ordinary African Union Summit.
The two-day Summit which was also attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and French President Nicolas Sarkozy focused mainly on political and security concerns on the African continent.
President Kagame also met with members of “Afrique Femmes Solidarites” on the sidelines of the AU Summit, the organization that presented him the Africa Gender Award in 2008. This year’s award was presented to Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. During the meeting, Madame Bineta Diop who heads the organization commended Rwanda for the achievement of ensuring women emancipation and observed that the award presented to President Kagame in 2007 made him not only the women Ambassador in Africa but in the entire world.
During the 16th AU Summit, heads of state and government attended various mini-summits on Ivory Coast, Sudan and Somalia, as well as discuss several other hotspots, such as Niger and Madagascar. However, two of the continent’s late-breaking political crises, in Egypt and Tunisia, were not discussed because they were ostensibly not part of the agenda.
The AU Peace and Security Council to created a high-level panel comprising of five heads of state drawn from all regions of the continent to deal with the crisis in Ivory Coast, and will be reporting back to the council in one month.
Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Ngcuema Mbasogo took over the rotating presidency of the AU from incumbent Bingu wa Mutharika.