On October 27, Brig Gen François-Xavier Mabin, the leader of a French detachment stationed in Gabon, was welcomed by Gen Jean-Bosco Kazura, the Chief of Defense Staff of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF).
Brig Gen Mabin is in Rwanda with a delegation for a four-day official visit that concludes on Friday.
Following meetings between Gen Kazura and Gen Thierry Burkhard, the Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) stated that Brig Gen Mabin’s visit aimed to expand military collaboration between the Rwandan army and the French Armed Forces. These discussions took place in Paris in March.
“We have set up a roadmap and today we are in its implementation which will result in numerous cooperation actions and exchanges starting in 2023,” the statement reads, quoting Brig Gen Mabin speaking after the meeting.
At the RDF headquarters, Brig Gen Mabin and his delegation also had one-on-one conversations with other members of the Rwandan army.
Earlier on Tuesday, Brig Gen Mabin and the team visited the Campaign Against Genocide Museum and the Kigali Genocide Memorial to pay their respects to the victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
The Kigali Genocide Memorial commemorates the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The remains of over 250,000 people are interred there. There is a visitor centre for students and others wishing to understand the events leading up to the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.
To outsiders, the genocide was represented as tribal-based ethnic violence, with the Tutsis the victims and the Hutus as the perpetrators. Precisely how many people were actually murdered may never be known; estimates vary between 500,000 and over a million. The number of people killed is widely accepted as being somewhere close to 800,000.