I AM back in Rwanda for a fortnight, a country I have visited annually over the last five years or so.

In the past I have been teaching English to primary school teachers but this year I am teaching street children at a refuge in Kigali.

My class would be better described as young adults than children.

I began the class in what must once have been a rather elegant gazebo but has since suffered the ravages of time, containing a home-made blackboard and three very rickety benches – not helped by my tripping over them twice (and once you are on your back there is absolutely nothing that will remove the residue of the red dust which covers the ground, from your clothing).

We then split the class on the basis of ability and I have taken the advanced group indoors to a small scullery containing nothing but a defunct sink.

The standard of their English is pretty good: they have a reasonable vocabulary and a firm grasp of grammar.

What they lack is any practice at spoken English. So my day is taken up with exercises to get them to speak out loud.

One of my most successful has been to have one of them act the lost tourist and get the others to give him directions to the nearest bank, or a well-known hotel, from different parts of Kigali.

There has been some criticism of the Rwandan ruling regime in recent years over the lack of media freedom, involvement in Congo’s civil war and the human rights record. I have, on occasion, been asked how I, as a politician, justify lending my support to such a regime. The simple answer is that I haven’t.

In all the years I have been coming to Rwanda, I have never once met a member of the regime. I come here to help ordinary Rwandans.

And whatever criticism one might legitimately make of the regime, this is one of the few poor countries in the world where there is no corruption and the Government is doing everything it can to help the poor.

The regime’s authoritarian streak and its dislike of a free press is understandable – if you think about it from their point of view, rather than from that of the western liberal intelligentsia.

Not yet 20 years ago, Rwanda suffered a genocide in which a million people were slaughtered in 100 days – a greater rate of productivity than that achieved by any Nazi death camp.

The regime is authoritarian because it is determined to maintain control, and never to let the ethnic tensions that gave rise to genocide be released again.

It is deeply suspicious of a free press because it was the media that openly encouraged people to go out and massacre their neighbours; it marshalled them, telling them where to go and who to kill.

Notwithstanding the spat the UK Government has had with Rwanda over its alleged involvement in the Congo (which they vehemently deny) Britain spends about £100m of your money annually in Rwanda, principally on education programmes.

People complain to me all the time about the fact that we spend their money on foreign aid like this. I disagree: I think it is something to be proud of.

We are the first of the rich countries (and despite our problems, yes, we are still one of the richest countries in the world) to live up to our international treaty obligation to spend 0.7 per cent of our GDP on foreign aid. This is something that increases our influence and gives the UK the ability to speak with real authority in the world.

As for Rwanda, I am confident that this British influence will bring, in time, a genuinely more democratic approach.

In the meantime my priority is to give these kids and young adults a better chance in life by improving their educational opportunities.