{"id":18219,"date":"2023-12-18T22:10:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T22:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paulkagame.com\/?p=18219"},"modified":"2023-12-19T04:13:27","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T04:13:27","slug":"visit-of-president-ursula-von-der-leyen-of-the-european-commission-press-statement-by-president-kagame-kigali-18-december-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/?p=18219","title":{"rendered":"Visit of President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission | Press Statement by President Kagame | Kigali, 18 December 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>President Ursula von der Leyen, we are very pleased to welcome you and your delegation to Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p>The President and I had very productive discussions.<\/p>\n<p>Rwanda and the European Union have been strong partners, in fact friends, for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, we have also deepened our cooperation across a wide range of sectors.<\/p>\n<p>The two agreements signed today on pharma manufacturing and critical raw materials are a case in point. There are many more things we work very closely on.<\/p>\n<p>As a continent, we still rely heavily on imports for vaccines and medicines.<\/p>\n<p>We want to change this, and the long-term solution is to strengthen our manufacturing and scientific capacity.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the European Union has been very active in this, trying to support us in this development.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier today, the President and I attended the inauguration of BioNTech\u2019s vaccine manufacturing site.<\/p>\n<p>The European Union, and President von der Leyen personally, helped to make this a reality.<\/p>\n<p>I want to thank the President for being with us to mark this milestone.<\/p>\n<p>The joint declaration with the European Investment Bank on critical raw materials reinforces Rwanda\u2019s commitment to sustainably and transparently develop our mineral resources.<\/p>\n<p>We are especially focused on processing the materials needed for the global energy transition.<\/p>\n<p>I am also pleased to share that Rwanda signed the Samoa Agreement today.<\/p>\n<p>Madame President, once again, I very much thank you for visiting us on this particular occasion, which goes a long way to cement further our relationship.<\/p>\n<p>So, thank you for finding the time to be with us on this day and giving us an opportunity to thank you directly for your support.<\/p>\n<p>May I now invite you to make the remarks you wish to make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Ursula von der Leyen, we are very pleased to welcome you and your delegation to Rwanda. The President and I had very productive discussions. Rwanda and the European Union have been strong partners, in fact friends, for a long time. Over the years, we have also deepened our cooperation across a wide range of sectors. The two agreements signed today on pharma manufacturing and critical raw materials are a case in point. There are many more things we work&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18219","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\/18219","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=18219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18221,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18219\/revisions\/18221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}