Paul Kagame is the president of Rwanda, a country of 14m people. He became president in 2000, having run the country since 1994. He led the armed wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a party dominated by Rwanda's Tutsi minority, from Uganda into Rwanda to end the genocide in which more than 500,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were slaughtered in around 100 days. He was 67 years old as of mid-2025.
In the first phase Kagame was a rebel leader who ended the genocide and took power. The RPF then pursued fleeing génocidaires across the border into what was then Zaire; human-rights groups allege the Rwandan army killed many civilians in the process. In 1997 Rwanda, alongside Uganda, toppled Mobutu Sese Seko and installed Laurent Kabila as leader of what became Congo. When Kabila proved less pliant, Rwanda invaded again, helping bring about the Second Congo War, which involved nine African states.
In the second phase, after that war ended, Kagame became a "donor darling": Western powers lavished aid on Rwanda, partly from guilt over the genocide, partly because his government seemed to prove that aid could be spent well in Africa.
In the third phase, especially after M23's withdrawal from Goma in 2012 under Western pressure, Kagame became a transactional operator who courts rising middle powers and flouts Western norms.
Under Kagame, Rwanda's economy has grown at 6.7% per year since 1994 (see Rwanda for details). He promotes "Brand Rwanda" via football-team sponsorship and paid media. His "Vision 2050" aims to make the country high-income by mid-century. He is a fan of Formula One and wants to host Africa's only circuit.
Growth has mostly benefited the urban rich (disproportionately Tutsis), while rural Hutus have lagged behind. The RPF and the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) run businesses across the economy, crowding out private investment. Dissent is crushed; dissidents abroad are threatened and sometimes assassinated, according to Human Rights Watch. Opposition politicians have been jailed and barred from elections that Kagame wins with close to 100% of the vote.
Despite—or because of—his ruthlessness, Kagame remains popular among Africa's elite. In an unscientific straw poll at a business conference in Ivory Coast, he won by a landslide when attendees were asked which African leader they would like running their country. He peppers speeches with the concept of agaciro, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "dignity" or "self-reliance". For Kagame the chief lessons of the 1990s are that you cannot rely on outsiders and that a lack of freedom is a price worth paying for security.
Kagame has shown how transactionalism can give minor countries outsize influence, offering to receive deported migrants (including from America), export critical minerals or send troops to places where the West is unwilling to go. The EU helps pay for the RDF's mission to fight jihadists in Mozambique who threaten a gas project led by TotalEnergies. In 2024 the EU signed a memorandum of understanding on critical minerals with Rwanda. Rwanda has acquired weapons from Turkey (drones), Russia (helicopters) and China (artillery). The country exports gold to the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar has a 60% stake in the Bugesera airport project and is negotiating an investment in Rwandair, the national airline. Rwanda has perhaps the closest ties of any African country with Israel, a source of surveillance technology and another small nation shaped by genocide. Rwanda's self-image is of an African Israel: small, tough and proud.
Qatar is an important partner for Rwanda. On June 27th 2025 a peace deal between Congo and Rwanda was signed in the White House, brokered by America and Qatar. The deal calls for Rwandan troops to leave within 90 days, but Kagame is unlikely to make good without either significant recompense or the threat of heavy sanctions. A similar deal mediated by Angola fell through in December 2024 when Kagame failed to turn up for the signing.
The UN Security Council has told Rwanda to stop backing M23. The EU has sanctioned three Rwandan generals, including a commander in Kagame's inner circle, and a Kigali refinery that the bloc says processes illicit gold from Congo. America has sanctioned a cabinet minister. Britain has cut some aid. Yet Kagame said in April 2025, at his annual speech to commemorate the genocide, that those sanctioning Rwanda could "go to hell".
Kagame has backed M23, a Congolese militia, with Rwandan troops—the UN reckons between 3,000 and 4,000 RDF soldiers are in eastern Congo. Earlier in 2025 the militia seized the cities of Goma and Bukavu. The last time M23 took Goma, in 2012, Western pressure led to the group's withdrawal after 11 days; this time it has stayed put. His intervention has several motives: protecting Tutsis in the Kivus, vanquishing the FDLR (a Hutu militia with roots in the genocide that has collaborated with the Congolese army), and earning hundreds of millions from smuggled minerals. In 2024 Rwanda recorded $1.75bn in mineral exports, up from about $500m in 2021; the figures include smuggled minerals from Congo. The RDF part-owns tin and gold smelters. Some in the RPF imply support for a "Greater Rwanda" that transcends colonial borders; dignitaries visiting Rwanda are given a presentation beginning with the impact of 19th-century colonial boundaries.
The Trump administration, with an eye on Congo's mineral wealth, wants Kagame to stop meddling as part of a peace-for-investment deal. Massad Boulos, Trump's senior adviser on Africa, visited the Great Lakes in April 2025, emphasising business rather than human rights but insisting Rwanda must stop supporting M23 and withdraw. On April 25th 2025 Marco Rubio hosted the foreign ministers of Congo and Rwanda, who signed a "declaration of principles" that America hopes will lead to a formal peace deal. Ahead of Boulos's visit, M23 withdrew from Walikale, the site of an American tin mine. Rwanda is pitching itself as a place where Congolese minerals can be transparently processed.
The war is costly. In March 2025 Moody's revised its outlook for Rwandan bonds to negative, in part because of the conflict. The IMF is warning of rising public debt. M23 faces problems running Goma, where cash is in short supply. On June 3rd 2025 Human Rights Watch said M23 had systematically killed civilians in Goma.
I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.