Louise Mushikiwabo

Louise Mushikiwabo (born May 22, 1961) is a Rwandan politician and diplomat who is the fourth and current Secretary-General of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). She previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation from 2009 to 2018. She also served as Government Spokesperson. She had previously been Minister of Information (20082009).

On 12 October 2018, Mushikiwabo was elected for a four-year term to the position of OIF Secretary-General at the 17th Summit of Francophonie in Yerevan, Armenia. She was re-elected on 20 November 2022 in Djerba, Tunisia.

Early life Louise Mushikiwabo was born on 22 May 1961 in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. Her father was Bitsindinkumi, from the Batsobe clan; Bitsindinkumi worked as a farmer, managing the family's smallholding as well as working as bookkeeper for a colonial coffee plantation. Her mother was Nyiratulira, a first cousin of the Abiru philosopher and historian Alexis Kagame. She spent her childhood in Kigali. The youngest of nine children, her siblings included Lando Ndasingwa, who became a notable businessman and politician in Rwanda before being killed in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide,

After completing primary and secondary school in Kigali, Mushikiwabo went to study at the National University of Rwanda (currently University of Rwanda), in the southern city of Butare, in 1981. She graduated from university in 1984, with a bachelor's degree in English, and then worked briefly as a secondary school teacher. where she began studying for a master's degree in Languages and Interpretation at the University of Delaware, with French as her specialist language. Upon finishing her studies in 1988, She started her career working for lobbying organisations, before taking a position with the African Development Bank (ADB); as part of her role with the ADB she lived in Tunisia for a short time, which was co-authored by Jack Kramer, an American journalist and ex-marine. The book is semi-autobiographical, describing Mushikiwabo's family history, her early life in Rwanda, and her experiences upon emigrating to the United States. Early in her tenure, Mushikiwabo was responsible for deciding whether to take action against several local media organisations that had run defamatory stories about Kagame. One newspaper, the Kinyarwanda-language daily Umuco, had published an article comparing the president to Adolf Hitler, and the High Council of the Press (HCP) had requested the government to suspend the newspaper's licence. Nkusi had refused this request, and while Mushikiwabo did not officially suspend the paper, it nonetheless stopped printing in October 2008. but was also firm in ensuring that the media complied with Rwanda's tough laws surrounding genocide denial. In 2009, she issued a temporary ban on the Kinyarwanda radio station broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), because she claimed it had aired programmes "giving free scope to genocidaires and negationists of the genocide"; the BBC denied this claim, arguing that it and the government had different interpretations of the genocide. For example when Rwanda had a diplomatic crisis with Germany following the arrest of President Kagame's chief of protocol Rose Kabuye, Mushikiwabo spoke to the international media to clarify the Rwandan government's position. She made use of her linguistic skills, being able to give statements in all of Rwanda's official languages, Kinyarwanda, French and English. Munich Security Conference, Member of the Advisory Council International Gender Champions (IGC), Member Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), Member of the Strategic Committee

Personal life and family Her brother, Lando Ndasingwa, was the only Tutsi minister in the last Habyarimana government, but was killed at the beginning of the 1994 genocide. Her sister, Anne-Marie Kantengwa, took over the management of their brother's hotel and restaurant, Chez Lando, after his murder. Mushikiwabo is also the niece of the distinguished Rwandan scholar and priest Alexis Kagame.