Paul Kagame

Biography

Paul Kagame was born in 1957 into a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda that fled to Uganda when he was two. He grew up in Uganda, and from 1979 he fought alongside Yoweri Museveni's rebels. In the National Resistance Army he specialised in intelligence, and after Museveni took power in 1986 he became head of Ugandan military intelligence.

Kagame was studying at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth when the Rwandan Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda in October 1990. After its commander Fred Rwigyema was killed on the second day, Kagame took command of the RPF. When the 1994 genocide began after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, he resumed the war, and the RPF's victory ended the killing.

From 1994 to 2000 Kagame was vice president and minister of defence under Pasteur Bizimungu and was seen as the country's real ruler. He backed rebel wars in Zaire in 1996 and 1998 that grew into the First and Second Congo Wars. He became president in 2000 after Bizimungu's resignation and has won the elections of 2003, 2010, 2017 and 2024, none of which observers judged free or fair. His government is credited with gains in health, education and growth but accused of repression and of backing rebels in Congo. He chaired the African Union in 2018-2019 and the Commonwealth from 2022 to 2024.