More than 2,000 women gathered at Intare Arena in Rusororo on Saturday for the 6th General Assembly of the Women’s League affiliated with the RPF-Inkotanyi and the message from First Lady Jeannette Kagame was direct: Rwanda has given women everything it can. Now it is their turn to deliver.
“There is nothing the country has not given us,” Mrs. Kagame told delegates drawn from all districts of the country and from various levels of leadership. “We have laws that protect us and national leadership that values the dignity of women. The rest is up to us.”
The assembly, held at the RPF-Inkotanyi party headquarters in Rusororo, focused on the role of women as the foundation of the family, a theme that carries increasing weight as Rwanda pushes to deepen the social gains behind its development numbers.
Mrs. Kagame called on members of the Women’s League to be “a driving force for change in mindset, attitudes, and actions” that accelerate socio-economic development, and said that safeguarding Rwanda must be part of everyday life, not a once-in-a-while exercise.
The gathering comes weeks after Rwanda’s 17th RPF National Congress in December 2025, where President Paul Kagame laid out the country’s National Strategy for Transformation for 2024–2029, a plan that puts the family unit and community-level accountability at the centre of the next phase of national development.
Saturday’s Women’s League assembly is a direct downstream conversation from that congress, translating party-level priorities into grassroots action. Women’s political and civic participation has long been a pillar of Rwanda’s governance model.
The country consistently leads global rankings for female representation in parliament, and Rwandan law offers some of the continent’s strongest legal protections for women. But Mrs. Kagame’s remarks suggest that legal and structural progress, however significant, is not enough on its own that the harder and more personal work of attitude and mindset must now follow.
With the Women’s League mobilising members across all 30 districts, the 6th General Assembly is likely to produce a set of resolutions that feed directly into RPF’s grassroots implementation of NST2. Whether the focus lands on economic inclusion, family health, or community leadership, the First Lady’s message set the tone clearly: the framework is in place, the expectation is ownership.
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