A true model of African development, Rwanda has been led for more than twenty years by an authoritarian president. However, Paul Kagame enjoys the support of international institutions and the West.
He is the reformer par excellence. At the head of “African Switzerland” - or “African Singapore”, it is according to - Paul Kagamé has truly changed the face of Rwanda since coming to power in 2000. A “success story” which has enabled the president Rwandan to be today in the small papers of international institutions, from the World Bank to the IMF, via the African Union which he chaired between 2018 and 2019. It must be said that Kagamé's economic record is quite exceptional: each year, the country records an average growth exceeding 7%. This is more than Rwanda's neighbors, which nevertheless have impressive mineral wealth. For foreign investors, Rwanda has become an El Dorado: it is possible to create a company there in a few hours and the country is at the forefront of innovation.
Scores worthy of the most authoritarian regimes
These economic indicators are only the hidden face of the iceberg because behind this idyllic picture hides a much darker reality. Beyond the Rwandan “economic miracle”, the dictatorship reigns. Elected with 98,63% of the vote in 2017, Paul Kagamé, who opposes the limitation of the number of mandates, reigns supreme in this country of 12 million inhabitants. Seven years earlier, Kagame celebrated his ten-year reign with a plebiscite (93,08% of the vote). Several NGOs, such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, then deplored the lack of opposition. Several parties, which planned to present candidates, had in fact not been able to take part in the ballot, excluded because of legal or administrative problems when submitting candidatures.
Elected with almost all the votes, Paul Kagame had released the card of the weakness of the opposition. “I can't be ashamed of my strength just because someone else is weak,” he said. For HRW, the situation is slightly different… The NGO deplored a climate of “intimidation, harassment and other abuses” during 2010. And for Carina Tertsakian, researcher for Human Rights Watch, the months preceding the ballot had "been marked by a growing repression of the opposition", which had "not been able to present candidates". Media closures that are too critical of power, repression and even assassinations of journalists and opponents… What if, in the end, Rwanda was not as much of a model as one might think? What if the international institutions were wrong?
“The figures don't lie,” replied Paul Kagame in an interview with Jeune Afrique in 2017. The journalist then seemed to ask the Rwandan president if he was certain that his country's economic indicators were not tampered with. Kagame is a follower of “performance contracts”. Rwandan officials thus become VRP who risk losing their jobs if the objectives set by the palace are not achieved. Au Monde, Benjamin Chemouni, professor-researcher at the international development department of the London School of Economics, shows the absurdity of such a policy: "To encourage people to take a mutual health insurance, for example, and thus inflate figures, we were able to force their hand by fining them or partially confiscating their property ”.
Tricky economic indicators?
Inflated figures which raise the question of the reality of the Rwandan “economic miracle”. For the historian Assumpta Mugiraneza, "it has happened that certain figures are a little rigged, but (…) even if Rwanda has not reached 95% of its objectives, it is at least at 85%". How to continue to believe a balance sheet whose power would tamper with the figures shamelessly? Since 2015, many World Bank employees have tried to alert their superiors to these manipulations. While the institution ensured that the poverty rate had fallen by six points between 2011 and 2014 in Rwanda, journalists from the Financial Times proved that the reality was different: the poverty rate had actually increased by 6%.
Despite these revelations, Paul Kagame remains today one of the most prominent African leaders. Behind the praises, Kagame nevertheless combines all the characteristics of the dictator: without mercy, repressing his people and, according to senior United Nations officials, having supported rebel militias in his Congolese neighbor, the Rwandan president is unclassifiable. For the third time since Kagame came to power, Rwanda is among the states that have undergone review by the United Nations Human Rights Council. In particular, Rwanda was asked to ratify the Rome Statute in order for the country to become a party to the International Criminal Court or to authorize the United Nations subcommittee for the prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading to resume his visits, but Paul Kagame does not seem ready to make efforts in this area.
The one who has been described as "the favorite strongman of the world's elite" by the New York Times has been blowing hot and cold since taking over as head of Rwanda. Reputed to be ruthless, violent with his collaborators, Paul Kagame affirms that he is making his last mandate there, but the intoxication of power could well lead him to try to re-emerge, in 2024 ... In this case, the Rwandan president could well become a dictator again. like the others in the eyes of the West because its image hangs by a thread. In La Libre, the editorialist Hubert Leclercq sums up with great accuracy the personality of the Rwandan president: "Kagame is a nationalist dictator, a man who has Rwanda pegged to the body, for whom national development comes before democracy ... But a dictator anyway. "