Freddy Mutanguha
CEO of the Aegis Trust, Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial
On Forgiveness
Freddy Mutanguha is CEO of the Aegis Trust and Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Freddy led the development of Aegis’ peace education programme in Rwanda and is now leading Aegis’ work to take this model beyond the borders of Rwanda to areas at risk, including the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Kenya. Joining Aegis in 2004 during the construction of the Kigali Genocide Memorial as a team leader responsible for genocide documentation, he was appointed Country Director in 2006. Freddy is Chair of the board of Miracle Corner Rwanda, an organisation which aims to empower the community in Rwanda by helping young people to acquire the vocational skills they need to thrive socially and economically.
He holds a master’s degree in project management from the Maastricht School of Management and trained as a teacher, securing a bachelor’s degree in Education from the Kigali Institute of Education. He survived Rwanda’s 1994 genocide as a teenager, and as an orphan head of household, in 2016, the Justice and Security Foundation declared him a Peace award winner for his outstanding contribution to peace. He is also profiled in the Atlanta Human Rights Museum as a prominent activist for human rights.
Helping to found AERG, Rwanda’s student survivors association, Freddy went on to become vice-President of IBUKA, the national umbrella association for Rwandan genocide survivors. He is an External Advisory Committee member of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive in Los Angeles, and lectures internationally on the impact of the Genocide and the importance of forgiveness as way of post-conflict reconstruction.