The Making of a Million Smiles

Title: The Making of a Million Smiles, Reflections on Rwanda’s Rise from the Ashes
Author: Udu Yakubu
Year of Publication: 2019
ISBN: 978-978-51255-6-6
Pages: 138 + xii

In our efforts to build a desirable future for Africa, we must not fail to look back and glean lessons from our history – lessons that remind us of the horrors that follow unbridled divisive rhetoric and actions that pit one segment of a populace against another. Likewise, we must not fail to learn from the examples of African countries on the rise, whose launch pad for social and economic renaissance has been the people’s shared commitment to the principles of equity and justice, and the moral authority of leaders that lead by example. Rwanda’s history evidently teaches both lessons, and in this book, the author shares his profound perspectives from the vantage position of a United Nations  Peacekeeper during the events of 1994. The reader would be instructed on how one and all, consciously or otherwise, participate in shaping the destinies of
nations.
-Dr. Kayode Fayemi, CON,
Governor, Ekiti State, Nigeria

This work is indeed a timely intervention as it serves as a wake-up call for more than a few African countries that are facing significant security challenges that have the footprints of the
Rwandan tragedy. Indeed, it is important that scholars continue to interrogate the circumstances that gave rise to the events of 1994 in Rwanda, but more importantly celebrate the resilience of the Rwandan people to collectively  recover from it and begin a new chapter of unprecedented socio-economic and cultural revolution. I recommend this book to all avid readers, practitioners in field of security management, and all our national security strategic institutions.
-Lt. Gen AB Dambazau (Rtd.),
Minister of Interior,
Federal Republic of Nigeria