Rwandan President Paul Kagame, center, with Michael Milken, Bill Gates, Tony Blair and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa after the "Investing in African Prosperity" panel at the 2013 Milken Institute Global Conference.
A recurring social media trope casts Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a defiant African hero, like Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, resisting the West’s dictates, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Anti-imperialists, socialists, and peace and justice communities across Africa and the world are inspired by the newly federated Alliance of Sahel States and by its leaders, especially Burkina Faso’s charismatic Ibrahim Traoré. Seeing this groundswell of support, Paul Kagame’s propagandists have rushed to liken him to Traoré. Others may sincerely imagine a likeness that doesn’t in fact exist.
Kagame has ruled Rwanda for 30 years, since seizing power at the end of his four-year war to re-establish Tutsi dominance in July 1994. Traoré has been in power for less than three years, since seizing power in a popular coup in September 2022. So, if one were to emulate the other’s example, wouldn’t Traoré be emulating Kagame, not the other way around?
Kagame doesn’t reject faux Western “democracy”
The most common argument for likening Kagame to Traoré is that they are both authoritarians who reject the faux democracy imposed by the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination so as to prioritize development. Instead, like Thomas Sankara, this argument goes, they inspire and mobilize popular will to achieve development goals and foil counterrevolutionary attacks. Traoré has famously said, “No country has developed under democracy,” and, “we are not in a democracy, we are in a popular, progressive revolution.”
However, Kagame has never rejected Western-style electoral process. He instead mimics it, staging elections, not allowing any other credible candidates to run, even imprisoning them, and then declaring outlandish victories. He was first elected by Rwanda’s Transitional National Assembly in 2000, then in a general election in 2003, which he claimed to win in a highly unlikely 94.3% landslide. '”It's a big democratic step that has been taken by our country,'' he reportedly said. ''It's a huge stride.''
He has staged more Western-style presidential elections every seven years since, winning with 93% in 2010, 98.78% in 2017, and 99% in 2024. In 2015, he claimed to have won with 98% a referendum that will allow him to rule until 2034.
Once again, Kagame isn’t rejecting Western electoral democracy. He’s mimicking it, letting the West know he’ll go through the motions while serving their interests.
And what has come of his 30 years of de facto authoritarianism? According to the 2024 report on the state of global food security and nutrition, the number of undernourished people in Rwanda has increased from 3.3 million in 2004–2006 to 4.3 million in 2021–2023. Although the prevalence of undernourishment in the total population has decreased from 36.9 per cent in 2004–2006 to 31.4 per cent in 2021–2023, it remains above that of eastern Africa (29 per cent), sub-Saharan Africa (22.7 per cent) and Africa overall (19.9 per cent). It is also above that of low-income countries (29.7 per cent) and least developed countries (22.1 per cent).
Kagame does not live on a captain’s salary
Ibrahim Traoré famously said, "Being the president of a country is an honor, not a business opportunity." Upon assuming office, he announced that he would continue to live on his military captain’s salary.
Kagame has famously enriched himself via Crystal Ventures, which owns businesses and properties in Rwanda and the West. He constantly travels the world in a private $65 million Gulfstream G6 jet, while his son Ivan lives in a $6.9 million Beverley Hills mansion.
While at the UN General Assembly gathering in New York City in 2011, he rented the $16,000-per-night presidential suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, raising eyebrows in the UK, which was then giving £80 million a year in aid to Rwanda.
Kagame Has Long Been a Darling of the West
It would be difficult to find an African president who has enjoyed more photo ops with Western presidents, prime ministers, and billionaires. He is a special favorite of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, who presented him with a Global Citizen Award in 2009, and of Emmanuel Macron. Evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren presented him with his International Medal of Peace.
Kagame is especially beloved in Davos, playground for the global elite, where he appears with the likes of Bill Gates, Antony Blinken, Klaus Schwab, and Donald Trump, and he can’t do enough to serve the Davos Agenda. He has also been a favorite with Israel and all of its leaders since they formed a victim’s pact in 1995.
Ibrahim Traoré has never been invited to Davos or Israel, and neither have the other revolutionary AES presidents, Niger’s Abdourahamane Tchiani and Mali’s Assimi Goïta, for obvious reasons.
When it suits Kagame, most of all when he’s called out, sanctioned, or cut off from Western aid for his crimes in Congo, he lashes out, claiming to be a defiant African. The most recent example was at this year’s genocide memorial in Kigali, where he told his Western critics to “go to hell.”
Traoré resists the US/EU/NATO Axis while Kagame serves its needs in Africa
Traoré and the other AES presidents have been resisting coups and assassination attempts ever since coming to power. US Africa Command Commander Michael Langley recently threatened Traoré in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, but Kagame’s Rwanda is a longstanding AFRICOM collaborator.
Kagame has put his troops in service to Western economic interests, most recently in Mozambique where they defend French TotalEnergies’ $20 billion Liquified National Gas (LNG) project. In November 2024, even as the Rwandan army waged war in DRC, as documented by the UN Group of Experts, the European Union awarded it another €20 million in military aid.
Now, after 30 years of Rwanda’s US/EU/NATO-backed war and plunder in DRC, Trump is apportioning Kagame’s reward. According to Reuters, Trump said on X that the US had provided the first draft of a deal to both sides, Rwanda and DRC, though its contents have not yet been disclosed.
You won’t see Traoré or Assimi Goïta or Abdourahamane Tchiani cutting any such deals in their part of the world, just as you won’t see them in Davos or Israel.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected]. You can help support her work on Patreon.
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