Paul Kagame

Paul Kagame has led Rwanda as president since 22 April 2000, after serving as vice-president and minister of defence from 1994. Born in 1957 in Tambwe, southern Rwanda, his Tutsi family fled to Uganda during anti-Tutsi violence in 1960. He later served in Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army before co-founding the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel movement whose military advance halted the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

As de facto leader after 1994 and formal head of state since 2000, Kagame has overseen rapid economic growth, near-universal health coverage, and a striking rise in women's parliamentary representation — Rwanda has consistently topped global rankings for women in legislatures. Kigali has become a hub for international conferences, and Rwanda hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2022 after joining the Commonwealth in 2009.

Critics, including Human Rights Watch and the UN Group of Experts on the DRC, accuse his government of suppressing dissent, jailing or exiling opposition figures (such as Victoire Ingabire and Diane Rwigara), and backing the M23 armed group in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 2015 constitutional referendum amended term limits, allowing Kagame to seek additional terms; he won the 2017 election with roughly 98% and the July 2024 election with a reported 99% of the vote.

Internationally, Kagame has positioned Rwanda as a peacekeeping contributor (notably in the Central African Republic and Mozambique's Cabo Delgado from 2021) and signed a controversial 2022 asylum-processing agreement with the United Kingdom, which the UK Supreme Court ruled unlawful in November 2023 and which the incoming Labour government scrapped in 2024. He chaired the African Union in 2018, pushing institutional reform and the launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, signed in Kigali in March 2018.