Do we like Paul Kagame?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Real rebuilding and women's representation on one side, serious allegations of backing a rebel group and shutting out critics on the other.
Kagame was born in 1957, and his Tutsi family fled Rwanda in 1959 and settled in a Ugandan refugee camp, where he grew up without Ugandan citizenship. He went on to serve in Uganda's rebel army, then helped found the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which attacked Rwanda in 1990. When the RPF took Kigali in 1994, as the genocide against Tutsi unfolded, he became vice president and the real power in government, and has been president since 2000.
The case for him is real. Western allies have hailed Rwanda as a model for African growth, the World Bank has cited strong growth and less administrative corruption, and women held about 64 per cent of lower-house seats as of 2018. Critics say that number is a smokescreen: dissidents argue it props up the government's image while women who tried to run against him were later arrested.
The ugly side is how Rwanda treats dissent. Freedom House's 2022 report said the government has suppressed dissent through surveillance, intimidation, torture and suspected assassinations of exiled critics. Human Rights Watch's Lewis Mudge put it this way: “Rwanda is a safe country for Rwandans if you keep your head down.” The government dismissed that, and Kagame has denied that the jailed critic Paul Rusesabagina was kidnapped.
The 2024 election made the point. Kagame polled around 99 per cent, while Diane Rwigara was excluded for not collecting 600 supporter signatures. Human Rights Watch called the vote a “mere performance”, and Victoire Ingabire said near-100 per cent wins reflect a lack of competition. Kagame himself acknowledged some people find the margin suspicious, and recently called Ingabire a “genocidaire”, which she called intimidation.
Now the harm check. On LGBTQ+ people, the record is thin and not hostile: asked in 2016 whether gay people could live in Rwanda, he said it “hasn't been our problem”. The bigger issue is Congo. The US Treasury accuses the Rwandan army of supporting, training and fighting alongside M23, and Rwanda's own ambassador to the US acknowledged “security coordination” with the group in early 2026. Rwanda says its involvement is defensive and denies direct military involvement.
Nothing in what turned up shows a court finding against him, and I found no climate or anti-LGBTQ+ campaigning of his own. But a government accused by rights groups of silencing critics, and an army sanctioned over a rebel group blamed for killings and mass displacement, is a lot to set against the rebuilding. Hence a close call that sits at the low end of the scale.