[On April 22, 2014], Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, visited MIT to discuss existing collaboration between his country and MIT, as well as to explore the possibility of broadening its scope. Kagame was traveling with Rwandan Ambassador to the United States Mathilde Mukantabana, Rwanda’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education Sharon Haba, and others of Rwanda’s leadership.

President Kagame and his delegation, together with Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, and Philip Khoury, associate provost and the Ford International Professor of History, toured the laboratory of Professor Ronald Prinn, who leads the Rwanda-MIT Climate Change Observatory Project and is the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Rwanda and MIT are collaborating to build a world-class observatory on Mt. Karisimbi measuring climate change and the atmospheric gases forcing climate change; the observatory is ultimately to be run by local researchers. The project evolved from discussions in 2008-2009 between President Kagame, his ministers, and the MIT administration.

"Rwandan President Paul Kagame visits MIT," MIT News, 23 April 2014