{"id":12531,"date":"2018-02-21T22:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T22:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulkagame.com\/?p=12531"},"modified":"2018-02-22T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T13:45:00","slug":"remarks-by-president-kagame-at-state-banquet-in-honour-of-president-edgar-lungu-of-zambia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/?p=12531","title":{"rendered":"Remarks by President Kagame at State Banquet in honour of president Edgar Lungu Of Zambia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kigali, 21 February 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good evening.<\/p>\n

Mr President, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to Rwanda. And thank you for accepting our invitation. Please know that you are among brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n

I think our foreign minister talked about this in more details: you may have noticed that there are many of us with Zambian-sounding names. But Rwanda and Zambia share more than that.<\/p>\n

We have similar aspirations of prosperity and dignity for our people, and a common vision for our continent.<\/p>\n

We are linked by membership in regional organisations for the realisation of these common objectives.<\/p>\n

In COMESA, we are connected by the desire for greater trade in our region, and ultimately across Africa.<\/p>\n

The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region brings us together to foster peace and security, so that our people can achieve their ambitions.<\/p>\n

Rwandans and Zambians are now more connected than before.<\/p>\n

Our national carrier, RwandAir, has regular flights to Lusaka. We can take advantage of this opportunity to increase visits and do more business.<\/p>\n

We are also united by our commitment to building a stronger, and more efficient African Union, able to deliver quality services to the citizens of this continent.<\/p>\n

This is a continuation of Africa\u2019s liberation, and all of us are stakeholders, in working towards this goal.<\/p>\n

Mr President, your visit here is a sign of the warm friendship between Rwanda and Zambia, and a catalyst for even more collaboration.<\/p>\n

So I take this opportunity to once again to welcome you to Rwanda, and wish you, your delegation and the people of Zambia, all the best in your development endeavours.<\/p>\n

May I now ask you to please join me in a toast: To the good health of His Excellency President Lungu, and the prosperity of the people of Zambia, and of the African continent.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kigali, 21 February 2018 Good evening. Mr President, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to Rwanda. And thank you for accepting our invitation. Please know that you are among brothers and sisters. I think our foreign minister talked about this in more details: you may have noticed that there are many of us with Zambian-sounding names. But Rwanda and Zambia share more than that. We have similar aspirations of prosperity and dignity for our people, and a common…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speech","post-has-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12531"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12539,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12531\/revisions\/12539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}