It never ceases to astonish me how little many of my educated African friends know about the 1994 Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi. As someone who lived this tragedy, I am frequently disappointed by the lack of awareness and indifference shown by many of my well-educated African friends when it comes to this horrific episode in recent African history.

Time and again, I have engaged in conversations with intellectual friends across the continent: Kenyans, Nigerians, Tanzanians, Cameroonians, and more, only to be asked rudimentary questions about the Rwandan genocide: “When did it happen?” “Who killed who?” “Is it still going on?” These questions reveal a striking level of ignorance among those who I would expect to be informed about such a watershed event on our continent.

This ignorance is not just about facts and dates. It also suggests a lack of empathy and understanding. Many Africans seem to think that the Rwandan Genocide was a “tribal conflict” that had nothing to do with them. They do not realize that the genocide was a crime against humanity and that it could happen anywhere.

In contrast, the average educated Muzungu (white) I meet has at least a basic grasp of the Rwandan genocide and its tremendous human toll. However, my African friends can readily expound on the French Revolution or the adventures of Napoleon, or the evils of the British colonial empire – all events long past and far removed from Africa.

Don’t get me wrong – these European histories deserve study. But it is deeply dismaying that so many of Africa’s best and brightest know little to nothing about the systematic murder of nearly a million Africans on their own continent just a generation ago.

This pattern becomes even more pronounced during the annual commemoration events we organize in my local community in the United States. I make a point to expressly invite fellow Africans to attend, but very few ever do. Their absence and disinterest mirror the apathy displayed by Rwanda’s African neighbors during the actual genocide in 1994, when the Tutsi were being slaughtered en masse.

Make no mistake, the West deservedly bears responsibility for failing to intervene during the genocide. However, I feel we let our African brothers and sisters off the hook far too easily for their own unconscionable apathy. For it was our fellow Africans – not Westerners – who witnessed firsthand the accumulating evidence of mass murder as the genocide unfolded.

Our African neighbors saw the horrors of genocide way before the images began flickering across Western TV screens. It was the Tanzanians who saw the thousands of Tutsi corpses flowing through the Akagera River, which separates Tanzania from Rwanda. The Ugandans watched in callous silence as Lake Victoria overflowed with the floating bodies of Tutsi men, women, and children. The Burundians heard direct accounts from the few survivors able to cross the river into Burundi during the early weeks of the killings.

And yet, despite all they witnessed, not one of these African nations lifted a finger to pressure the UN for action or intervene themselves. Even venerated African elder statesmen like Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela largely failed to act decisively.

This collective lack of concern among those geographically and culturally closest to Rwanda will always trouble me deeply. It calls into question whether romanticized African concepts like Ubuntu (humanity towards others) and Pan-African brotherhood truly carry any modern resonance.

For context, Africans helmed the top positions at the United Nations during the genocide as well – with the Egyptian Boutros Boutros Ghali as Secretary General, and Kofi Annan of Ghana leading UN peacekeeping operations. Their failure to strongly speak out casts a pall on the continent.

As a crime against humanity that took place on African soil, I believe Rwanda’s tragedy should be etched in the minds of all Africans. We must break this disturbing silence and labor intensively to raise awareness about the genocide against the Tutsi. For too long, our history has been defined from a Eurocentric lens.

My African friends and I may know inside out the tragedies of the white man from centuries past. But we have work to do to remember and memorialize our own recent tragedies first. The souls of one million murdered Tutsi cry out to us for remembrance – and we must not fail them again through our collective indifference. Ends