After decades of exerting military and economic power in Africa, France is scaling back its presence amid resentment in many countries. There is one exception, however: Rwanda.
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As other African nations seek to curtail France’s influence, Rwanda embraces it, despite decades of frosty relations with Paris over its role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The move, championed by Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s leader, has given France a much-needed security partner in Africa and secured Rwanda millions of dollars in development and trade funding. The improved relations are also a rare piece of good news for French President Emmanuel Macron, who has faced a wave of outrage across Africa.
“We have a partner in Kagame,” said Hervé Berville, French Minister of State, in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
“It really is the beginning of a new chapter,” he said.
For decades, diplomatic hostility characterized relations between the two countries. Kagame accused France, and in particular the government of François Mitterrand, the then president, of empowering Rwandan officials who oversaw the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were massacred.
The relationship became so frayed in the early 2000s that Rwanda abandoned French in classrooms, expelled the French ambassador and closed the French international school and cultural centre.
But things began to change when Macron came to power. In 2021, a report he commissioned concluded that while France was not complicit in the genocide, it bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility. Rwanda published a report weeks later, accusing Paris of providing “unwavering support” to the government that carried out the genocide.
Macron visited Rwanda shortly after, setting off a cascade of events that led to rapprochement between the countries. By mid-2021, France had appointed an ambassador to Rwanda. The French Development Agency opened an office in Kigali.
In May, leaders from more than 50 French companies attended the African CEO Forum in Kigali, officials said.
Still, the two countries are at odds. France has accused Rwanda of supporting rebel fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, something Kigali has denied. Rwanda is aggrieved that France has not acknowledged more responsibility for the genocide.
But Rwanda and France have solidified their defense cooperation, even as French troops have been expelled from African countries like Mali.
France has considered Rwanda as an alternative to deploying troops in Africa, said Federico Donelli, a professor of international relations at the University of Trieste.
France has also increased its development funding to Rwanda. The French development agency has spent 500 million euros on job creation and the renovation of health facilities.
For Berville, strengthening relations with Rwanda will involve France coming to terms with the past, including prosecuting genocide suspects living in France. That is the only way to make the improvement in relations “irreversible,” he said. “Words are good, but actions are better.”
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