Focus on Rwanda at Commonwealth

20 June 2022

Over 35 heads of state and government are expected to attend this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. It gets underway on Monday.

The week-long summit runs under the theme: “Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming.”

Rwanda is the newest member of the 54 nations gathering, having joined on 29 November 2009.

The country was due to host the CHOGM in 2020, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the meeting was postponed twice.

Before Mozambique in 1995 and Rwanda in 2009 joined the grouping, it was limited to former British colonies.

Togo will officially submit its bid to join the group and Zimbabwe has renewed interest to rejoin the group after the late former president Robert Mugabe withdrew its membership in 2003.

In a statement, the Commonwealth said: “The official opening of CHOGM takes place on Friday, 24 June, and is followed by the main high-level meetings of Heads on Friday, 24, to Saturday, 25 June. They are proceeded by four Forums, ministerial meetings, side events and other activities.”

The Commonwealth’s secretary-general, Patricia Scotland, noted that conflict, climate change and Covid-19 had changed the way people lived since the last CHOGM meeting in 2018.