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PM Narendra Modi gifts 200 cows to Rwanda village
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the first Indian PM to visit the East African country. He arrived on Monday on a two-day state visit to Rwanda on the first leg of his three-nation Africa tour.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday gifted 200 cows in a symbolic gesture to villagers in Rwanda’s Rweru model village under the Rwandan Government’s Girinka Programme.
The locally sourced cows are a contribution to Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s flagship programme Girinka in which the poorest get cows from the government and gift the first female calf to a neighbour to promote brotherhood. The exercise also enables the poorest in Rwanda to have a livelihood. The national social protection scheme was personally initiated by the Rwandan President.
Earlier in the day, Modi visited the Genocide Memorial Centre in Kigali to pay his respects to over 250,000 victims of Rwanda’s mass killings in 1994.
The first Indian Prime Minister to visit the East African country, Modi arrived on Monday on a two-day state visit to Rwanda on the first leg of his three-nation Africa tour.
“Beginning the day on a poignant note! PM @narendramodi visits the Genocide Memorial Centre in #Kigali. The Memorial honours the victims of the worst excesses of violence. It is also symbolic of the admirable and exemplary process of reconciliation Rwanda has embarked upon,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.
The memorial is the final resting place for more than 250,000 victims of the genocide against the Tutsi -- the principal ethnic community in Rwanda. There is also a children’s memorial and an exhibition on the history of genocides around the world.
(With agency inputs)
