Rwanda appoints first ever ambassador to Egypt

KIGALI: The former Grand Mufti of Rwanda, Sheikh Saleh Habimana has been appointed during a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame as the country's first ever ambassador to Egypt, according to a Sunday statement released by the Cabinet.

It said that an embassy was urgently needed "to reshape diplomatic and technical cooperation links" between the two countries and "to give them fresh impetus".

"The relationship and harmony between the Rwandan and Egyptian communities are simply natural," the official statement said and noted that the leaders of the two countries shared a "common perspective" on a range of continental and global issues.

Egypt is one of Rwanda's leading development partners, especially in the health sector.

The two countries' leaders have expressed their desire to expand this cooperation to other areas, with Egyptian investments in tourism and the industrial sector being planned, it said.

Rwanda and Egypt and both members of the Nile Basin Initiative which groups 10 countries: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

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The basin of Africa's longest river serves a population estimated at some 300 million people.

An accord on the waters of the Nile signed in 1929 gave Egypt exclusive use and surveillance of the river whose source is said to be in the high mountains of Southern Rwanda.