The country in Africa I know a little is beautiful Rwanda! My interest in this landlocked country started in 2006 when I joined my then partner who was working for an NGO. When I returned from this first strip, I started researching more thoroughly the country’s history and culture. What struck me most in this initial research was that all of it was written by non-Rwandans, from the white fathers’ descriptions of pre-colonial Rwanda all the way to recent anthropologists, historians, or journalists explaining what Rwandans do or think, how they go about their lives, and why. A little later, after I finished writing my book After “Rwanda”: In Search of a New Ethics, I thought what the world really needed was a presentation, not of Rwanda’s extraordinary body of thought and culture overall, but at least, as far as I was concerned, of its small, but eminently distinctive philosophical output.
The following pages are just the tip of the iceberg, a way of starting any research into Rwanda’s long, rich, and diverse philosophy.