The President spends 12-hour day dealing with affairs of state, takes his exercise (gym or tennis), spends time with his wife and four children and then says goodnight to them. He then stays up reading for three or four hours a night.
Mr. Kagame tells the Daily Telegraph newspaper that he spends the next hours reading anything he gets his hands on.
“Mainly it is books about economics, business management, development issues, politics, international affairs,’ he says in the interview published Thursday. “I get newspapers from Britain and other countries twice a week, and read them almost page to page. Sometimes I find I’m reading things I don’t even need to read, because my mind is still hungry. I don’t need much sleep. Four hours is enough.”
As head of state, the President is not expected to think personal, instead he has a political philosophy. So what drives his thinking?
“Pragmatic, doing what is doable,” and adds that fighting war is more to his liking. “Even with all the hardships and hunger, war is straightforward and clear-cut,” he explains.
“But building a nation from nothing? A nation that has just experienced genocide? There is no strategy manual for this. There is nothing that is not a priority, and the priorities are always conflicting. I try to look at problems very clearly and think, “How do we get out of this? What will work? What will be the consequences for the people involved?”’
As Rwanda prepared to the polls on August 09, observers seem to have written off any challenge to President Kagame. Instead, they are looking what will the country be like after he assumes office – up until the next presidential election in 2017?
Mr. Kagame tells the Telegraph that Rwanda will become an increasingly open and democratic society, but not to impress the international community, or because meddlesome foreigners are demanding it.
“No,” he says, “we must do it because fundamentally we believe in it, because these values are universal and we share them, and because it is good for us.”