I believe I have lain in bed for far too long, thinking and visualizing solutions on how to bring back hope to our people so that we will begin to change the negative stories told about Africa.

I see the role of changing the African narrative as an obligation that lies on all Africans because our story was the worst ever told.

The good ones are never said.

Our storytellers do not want to talk about it; maybe out of fear, maybe out of envy, but as the African proverb suggests, until the lions have their own historians, the story of the hunt will continue to be glorified by the hunter!

To change this, we have to start narrating our stories ourselves!

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I believe my main worry was not just about my earlier question on how did the Rwandese moved their country forward and how can we all do it; it is about getting all those positive stories out there.

When you think of Rwanda, the first thing that comes to mind is the deadly genocide in which millions of people lost their lives. I ran a google search on the country’s name and part of what popped up is exactly what the media and the western world has painted. “Mention Rwanda to most people and they think of it as a highly dangerous place.”

This is exactly the overall story of Africa and we are partly responsible for telling it the way it is told today, but I think enough is enough!

Though we have so many challenges, I think it is time for us to start turning those challenges into opportunities.

Behind every one bad story, I believe there are tens of good ones that were hidden, so rather than allowing others to capitalize on our bad ones, we can start highlighting the good ones ourselves.

According to an author Yehuda Berg, words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity.

Berg said we can choose to use this powerful force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair because according to him, words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.

So it is left to us to decide what to use it for, and I believe using it to humble ourselves will be the best thing to do.