On the 5th of March, as part of our ongoing discussion about genocides in the African continent, we focused our attention on Rwanda and Sudan. After shedding some light on the history of the relationship between the Hutus and Tutsis, we played a video by Step Back History, a popular history channel on YouTube, on the Rwandan Genocide. We asked the students to be alert to the similarities between what happened in Rwanda and the incidents in other African nations. In case of Sudan, we took the help of videos by National Geographic, The Economist and Vox to understand both the political history of the region as well as present-day conditions.

ccccNow that they were somewhat familiar with many of the major genocides in Africa, some of the students questioned why the history books they had in school did not refer to any of them. Others observed that just as we had discussed in the case of Liberia, many of Rwanda’s and Sudan’s problems seemed to stem from the fact that diverse communities had been forced to become part of one single country by external agents.

ccccWith this we wrapped up this segment, promising each other that we would be on the lookout for news about Africa from now on.

 -Proiti, Samyabrata