Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is spotless. Plastic bags are banned. Traffic is orderly. Hawkers, panhandlers, and street prostitutes are almost nonexistent. The buses run on time. Even corruption—long the scourge of Rwanda’s Central African neighbors—is difficult to find. “Everywhere else in Africa you feel [corruption] from the traffic cop to the top. Here, no one has asked me for a bribe,” one foreign businessman told The Economist .
It hasn’t always been this way. The country has been transformed under the rule of President Paul Kagame, who took power in 1994 following the Rwandan Genocide. Kagame’s ambition is to make Rwanda the “Singapore of Africa,” by attracting foreign investment through government building projects. Indeed, Rwanda is more prosperous now than ever before. His political philosophy draws from the city state as well; strong, stable leadership providing the long-term vision—and power— he sees as necessary for development, though Singapore’s brand of non-democracy is much less overt than Kagame’s.
The country’s economy has been one of the fastest growing (if poorest) in the world, achieving GDP growth rates of 8% since 2000. The economy and government have gradually become less dependent on foreign aid. In 2006, aid made up a quarter of the economy and half the government budget. By 2016, this had fallen to 5% and 17% respectively.
But this prosperity, and the tidy orderliness that foreign businessmen and development aid organizations so love, has come at a cost. By any measures, the Rwandan government, led by Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), is a highly repressive and undemocratic regime. Freedom House gives the country a ranking of 24 out of 100, on par with nations like Russia, Cuba, and neighbouring country Congo.
However, the man leading that government, President Kagame, is something of an enigma. To some, like former British PM Tony Blair, he is “a visionary leader,” while to others like David Himbara, a former aide now in exile, he is the architect of “a repressive totalitarian apparatus that controls almost all aspects of national life.”
Kagame styles himself as a soft-spoken technocrat—constantly launching and proposing new programs aimed at modernizing Rwanda and reducing poverty. He even recently proposed delivering blood to clinics and hospitals via drone. However, this masks an unpleasant reality. He is “very good at telling you what you want to hear,” as one long-time observer put it.
Kigali’s lack of beggars, hawkers, and prostitutes can be at least partially explained by the existence of so-called “transit camps.” According to Human Rights Watch, a US based NGO not permitted to operate in Rwanda, they are routinely rounded up and placed in these camps where they are held without charge. Beatings are reportedly commonplace.
Rwanda’s electoral system is largely uncompetitive. President Kagame has won more than 90% of the vote in all three elections he has contested, a somewhat suspicious accomplishment. The constitution was amended after a 2015 referendum to allow Kagame to run for a third term, and possibly serve until 2024.
The president himself has said he doesn’t plan to stay forever. “You requested me to lead the country again after 2017. Given the importance and consideration you attach to this, I can only accept. But I don’t think that what we need is an eternal leader,” he said, announcing his intention to seek re-election. Yet, his government has effectively prevented opposition parties from challenging him.
The August 2017 election provides several telling examples. When 35-year-old businesswoman and Kagame critic Diane Rwigara announced her candidacy, nude photos of Rwigara were leaked onto the Internet just days later. On July 7th, Rwigara and two other candidates were disqualified by the electoral council, prompting Amnesty International to state that the elections would be held in a “climate of fear and repression.” Indeed, though Frank Habineza, leader of the Green Party, was able to get on the ballot, he complained of constant harassment and intimidation. In 2010, his deputy was beheaded by unknown assailants.
In another hallmark of authoritarian regimes, the ruling RPF has increasingly supplanted the state as the nation’s power center. In rural areas, RPF representatives each monitor units of ten households. The party controls many of the countries public works projects and large chunks of the economy.
Rwanda’s current administration came to power out of the ashes of the country’s 1994 genocide, in which up to a million people may have died. The assassination of then President Juvénal Habyarimana triggered massive killings of the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutu voices by the extremist government and the violent bands incited by them, only ending when Kagame’s RPF routed the government and took control of the country by force. Hutu forces responsible for the killing retreated into Congo (then called Zaire).
Ironically, the man who ended the world’s deadliest genocide since the Holocaust played a pivotal role in starting its deadliest conflict since the Second World War. In 1996, Rwanda, along with Uganda and Burundi, supported a rebel force lead by Laurent Kabila in Eastern Congo. Though the aim had initially been to capture the Hutu rebels responsible for the genocide, Kabila’s forces eventually overthrew the country’s long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1998, Kabila ordered Rwandan and Ugandan forces to leave the country, prompting another Rwanda and Uganda backed rebellion. This time, the war quickly devolved into a complex patchwork conflict of militia groups competing for resources and influence, leaving as many as 5.4 million dead.
The war ended with peace negotiations in 2003, but left much of mineral-rich eastern Congo in the hands of various militias. Violence continues to this day, with some militias covertly supported by the Rwandan government, and others by the Congolese in a simmering proxy resource war, according to a UN Security Council report.
The Rwandan economy relies in part on mineral resources, particularly tungsten, tin, and tantalum, smuggled from mines in eastern Congo often run by armed groups—the country exports more of these resources than could possibly be obtained from purely domestic sources. A study by the nonprofit rights group Enough Project, citing Rwandan government data, found that from 2010 to 2011, Rwanda’s mineral exports increased 62 percent compared to an only 22 percent rise in domestic mining production.
According to a 2015 UN report, “The credibility of the mineral tagging system in place in Rwanda is jeopardized by the laundering of Congolese minerals, as tags are routinely sold.” The report asserted that the Rwandan system of bagging and tagging product at the mine to certify their origin had been compromised. Furthermore, it found that the M23 rebel group, led by warlord Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, had received arms from the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, and monetary support from Rwandan mineral traders. “Several traders have contributed to finance M23 rebels out of profits resulting from smuggling Congolese minerals into Rwanda,” according to the UN report. M23 was able to capture the eastern Congolese city of Goma in 2012, before being defeated by UN-backed Congolese troops.
Clearly, Rwanda’s resource dependent economy is driven by smuggled conflict minerals. Tellingly, an area of Kigali famous for its high-rise towers is nicknamed “Merci Congo,” after the development allegedly funded with mineral wealth from eastern Congo.
In contemporary Rwanda, we are left with a contradiction. Kagame’s government has undoubtedly improved the lives of its people. It has encouraged foreign investors to build solar farms, a peat-power plant, and even a rig that extracts methane from below Lake Kivu to aid in electrifying the country. Government programs, including terracing hills to make more farmland and building irrigation canals and dams, have boosted small farm output and increased farmers income by one third in the decade before 2011—in a country where 90% of the working population rely on farming. Poverty and inequality are down. Kagame’s efforts in post-genocide reconciliation have gained well deserved plaudits.
Yet, political freedom is stifled, many are held without detention and mistreated, and how much of Rwanda’s economic success relies on Congo’s suffering, no one can say. Much progress has been made in development, but Kagame’s Rwanda, destabilizing its neighbour for profit and governing through fear, is no Singapore, at least not yet.