Tell my child that I was there in Kigali

If I don’t tell them myself, tell them on my behalf.

Tell my daughter and my son that their father was there, on the day our continent signed the African Continental Free Trade Area, too

Tell them Paul Kagame, Mahammadou Issoufou, Emmerson Mnangagwa and Moussa Faki Mahamat, were there.

Tell them their father was proud on the day African boarders were removed; tell them they live in a proud, vibrant and prosperous continent, because you, their uncle’s and aunts were vanguard Pan-Africans, who brought down the walls left by colonialists and maintained by imperialists.

Tell them, if their grandparents fought for their political independence, you achieved their economic freedom.

Tell them to be proud and free; tell them to live where they wish, from Lagos to Addis, Durban to Casablanca: unhindered, Tell them that Kigali isn’t their home, but only their place of origin; Africa is!

Tell them their father would have wished them to speak Igbo and Wolof and Kiswahili, Amharic and Zulu. Tell them he would have wished them to know how to cook Djolof, Pap/fufu/ugali/Nsima and Thieboudienne. Tell them he would have loved them to dance Rumba, Guhamiriza and Makossa.

Tell them to ask no visa to anyone, but to welcome all mankind to Rwanda, and travel, preferably by land, from Cape to Cairo, from Mombasa to Hergeisa.

For, thanks to you their aunts and uncles, Africa is theirs to enjoy. Amandla! ✊