F1 is keen to hold a race in Africa and talks with Rwanda have been known about for some months.

The FIA, F1’s governing body, is hosting its general assembly and prize giving in the Rwandan capital Kigali, and Kagame chose its opening to put his official seal on the grand prix project.

Kagame said: “I am happy to formally announce that Rwanda is bidding to bring the thrill of racing back to Africa, by hosting a Formula 1 grand prix.

“A big thank you to [F1 president] Stefano Domenicali and the entire team at F1 for the good progress in our discussions so far.

“I assure you we are approaching this opportunity with the seriousness and commitment it deserves.”

If a deal can be agreed, the race would be held on a new track planned close to the new Bugesera airport outside Kigali.

The track designer is Alexander Wurz, a former F1 driver and the chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association.

Wurz’s company has been working on the track with local advisers, companies and authorities for more than a year. The circuit, which is fast and flowing, is being built alongside a lake and makes use of the hilly topography of the area.

Wurz is also designing the new Qiddiyah track in Saudi Arabia, which is expected to finished in 2028 and host a grand prix in 2029.

F1 had previously tried to revive a grand prix in South Africa at the Kyalami track, which last hosted a grand prix in 1993, but talks collapsed over problems with the local promoter.

The Rwanda project is now considered the most likely for an African grand prix but the project remains unconfirmed.

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem met with Rwanda’s Sports Minister Richard Nyirishema at the general assembly meeting.

Ben Sulayem said: “To be here in Rwanda for such an important moment in the FIA’s calendar is a testament to the strength of this nation, in particular its growing influence in motorsport.

“We are aligned on our values and shared goals across key sectors such as innovation, sustainability, and road safety, and I look forward to our continued partnership. The future of motorsport in Africa is bright.”

He has 99.15% of the vote so far, with about 79% of ballots counted, partial results announced by the electoral commission show.

The 66-year-old again faced no meaningful opposition, with leading figures banned. His two opponents shared less than 1% of the vote.

Mr Kagame thanked Rwandans for their trust in an address at his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party headquarters.

“These are not just figures, even if it was 100%, these are not just numbers. [They] show the trust, and that is what is most important,” Mr Kagame said.

His opponents – environmentalist Frank Habineza and ex-journalist and government adviser Philippe Mpayimana – have 0.53% and 0.32% respectively.

The full provisional results are due by 20 July and the final ones by 27 July.

The results come as no surprise.

They mirror the 2017 election’s outcome that had the same candidates taking part – which Mr Kagame won with 98.8% of the vote.

At least three aspirants were disqualified from running, including Diane Rwigara, an outspoken critic of Mr Kagame.

The Electoral Commission says 98% of the more than 9.5 million eligible voters took part in the elections.

They were voting for a President and 53 legislators.

Elections for 27 special seats meant for women, young people and people with disabilities will take place on Tuesday.

Mr Kagame has been the de-facto leader of Rwanda since the end of the 1994 genocide and president since 2000.

Rights groups accuse him of curtailing freedoms since taking office, while his supporters say he had presided over economic growth and helped end ethnic divisions.

That is one of the biggest takeaways I am returning to Ghana with having been invited as a guest of President Paul Kagame’s liberation party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in Kigali as it celebrates its 35^th anniversary. 

My observations while I sat through the party’s International Conference, the first in a series of activities to mark the anniversary leads me to one conclusion.

Ghana continues to be a poor country with its development gear firmly stuck in reverse because we have failed to fix the two main political parties that have governed us in the last 31 years under the 4^th republic.

In a democracy, only political parties can form a government. Governments fix countries. An indisciplined political party will produce an indisciplined government. An indisciplined government will produce a poor, corrupt and underdeveloped country. That is the problem of Ghana in a nutshell.

Since 1992, NDC and NPP have been competing with each other over which party can impose the most economic misery. Each administration had done worse than the one before. The last time the economy nearly collapsed was under the NDC in 2014/2015. We went to the IMF then. The NPP took over and they have succeeded in inflicting Ghana’s worst economic crisis in a generation.

The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have much to learn from the RPF, a party created by a group of Rwandese in exile amid a genocidal conflict that left an estimated 800,000 people slaughtered.

But today, RPF superintends over a country ranked first on the continent and amongst the top ten fastest-growing economies in the world, pre and post covid-19, according to the African Development Bank.

The RPF exudes discipline.

Here at the Intare Conference Arena in Kigali, there was an order. It was a political party event and yet there was no chaotic hawking of party paraphernalia by party foot soldiers, loyalists and activists.

Unlike at an NDC or NPP event where rowdy party foot soldiers would crowd out the streets leading to the venue and take over the premises selling all manner of party paraphernalia, here in Kigali the streets around the venue were quiet, empty in fact. As for the premises, not a single party crowd could be seen.

The only people I saw in party T-shirts were mainly ushers and stewards who did their jobs with great discipline and professionalism. The remainder of the nearly 2000 people who occupied the main auditorium were in formal clothing.

There were no raised voices, no screaming of party slogans, no chanting of party songs, no drumming and dancing and no yelling of appellations to greet party officials.

No party posters were littering the walls of the venue, no party flags hanging from street polls and not a single President Kagame T-shirt anywhere.

When President Kagame, who by the way is chairman of the party walked in, he was greeted with only applause.

What there was in abundance though was an exclusive focus on policy and not politics. The only party official allowed to speak was the national vice chairman who spoke for 4 minutes or less.

This is a political party radiating discipline. Even at lunch, there was no sense of entitlement by party members. Everyone joined an orderly queue and waited for their turn to be served. 

I have been to many political party events in Ghana and I have watched as party members fought over food, littered the venue with rubbish and treated everyone not in party colours as strangers not deserving of anything the party has funded. Here at the RPF event grounds, there was not a single litter of rubbish anywhere, not even after lunch when more than a thousand people had eaten.  

But here is the best part.

To enrich the conference, the party invited an excellent panel of international experts from the fields of development, finance, industry and economics to lead the policy discussions.  

The President of Rwanda and the Chairman of the party himself, Paul Kagame never once mounted the stage. He walked in with his wife and sat down in the front row. He came in just when the second panel was about to begin, took out his pen and note pad and began to actively take notes.

Soon he was pleading with the moderator to contribute, one that will pitch him against a Harvard Professor and a former President of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Do not forget this is an event of an African political party and yet here was the President and Chairman of the party being openly challenged at his event in a healthy exchange of ideas about how best to develop Rwanda and the rest of the continent.

Dr Donald Kaberuka, Former President of the AfDB Group argued that Africa must first focus primarily on determining what to do and how to do it when dealing with its developmental challenges instead of focusing on implementation. In his view, if you do not know what to do and how best to do it, you will implement the wrong solutions.

President Kagame raised his hands, apologised to the moderator and appealed for time to challenge Dr Kaberuka. He stayed in his front-row seat and spoke.

He was emphatic that Africa’s real problem was implementation. He argued that African leaders already knew what our problems are, what to do to fix them and how to do it. For him, the only problem is implementing what we already know.

“When it comes to doing things we either do nothing or do the wrong things,” he said.

If this was an NDC or NPP event in Ghana, after President Nana Akufo-Addo or the presumptive opposition leader and former President, John Mahama had spoken, no one will dare raise a challenge.

But that is exactly what happened here, in an auditorium packed with party supporters.

Dr Célestin Monga, a Professor at Harvard University fired back. “I will dare say that I am on the side of Dr Kaberuka on this one. I can tell you, Mr President, I’ve had interactions with a lot of ministers, Prime Ministers and Presidents who believe in the wrong ideas. So I believe that ‘the what’ in some situations is still relevant”, he said.

President Kagame challenged that position some more but the panellists stood their ground. In the end, this was a beautiful exercise in diagnosing Africa’s problems but most importantly finding solutions to them.

Throughout this very riveting exchange, never once did I hear any of the party supporters, loyalists, members and activists in the auditorium raise a voice at the experts.

If you are a Ghanaian, can you imagine President Akufo-Addo or John Mahama sitting in their front-row seat and being openly challenged at their political party event with thousands of party supporters in attendance?

The RPF is a political party that prioritizes discipline over chaos, policy over politics and my personal favourite, meritocracy over party loyalty.

That last bit is the reason they had a panel made almost exclusively of international experts with no affiliation to the party at their commemorative event. If this was an NDC or NPP event, the panellists would have been party loyalists, sympathizers and activists who chose not because they are the best in their fields but because they are party people.

If only the NDC and the NPP can adopt this policy over a political approach Ghana may well be on its way back to economic salvation.

Rwanda is not claiming it has arrived. Far from it. They still have tremendous challenges. But right now they are Africa’s brightest shining economic light.

They are because they first fixed their governing political party.

The Rwandan leader got 2, 999 votes, accounting for 99.8% of the total votes while his closest contender Abdulkarim Harelimana got 3 votes or 0.2% according to a Rwandan national daily. The outcome delighted the party’s supporters.

“I’m very satisfied with the elections, how it went, the results. Especially the re-election of the President of the Republic and President of the RPF, Paul Kagame, who was re-elected by a very large majority of 99.8 percent. ” Olivier Mugabonake, member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front

Kagame, Rwanda’s president for 22 years will now serve another five years as head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the political party he has led since 1998.

Alice Urusaro Karekezi, member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front even wants him to run for president again.

“It’s true that it’s the work of all Rwandans who have accompanied him in this. But it’s true that the particular character of his leadership has a lot to do with this success. As far as I am concerned, if he runs for re-election (to the presidency, ed), yes without hesitation.” Karekez said after the announcement of the result.

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The 2,000 supporters present at the congress in Kigali voted Sunday on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the ruling party since the end of the genocide.

The Wednesday talks in the Angolan capital Luanda – under the mediation of President João Lourenço – agreed to a de-escalation of tensions between the two neighbours.

The leaders also called for an “immediate cessation of hostilities and immediate withdrawal and without condition of M23 from its positions in DRC”.

But M23 spokesperson Major Willy Ngoma has told BBC Great Lakes that the group will not withdraw from its positions.

“Withdrawing to go where?” Major Ngoma asked. “We are Congolese. Do you want us to live without a country?”

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He said this was a Congolese political problem to be solved among Congolese people.

The armed group says it fights for a “noble and just cause” of defending the rights of Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese – those it says are marginalised – but the Congolese government accuses it of being a Rwandan proxy.

Rwanda-DR Congo relations have been tense since M23 resumed attacks in North Kivu province in late March after nearly a decade without a major offensive.

Each side blames the other for starting the fighting, which has displaced more than 170,000 people, according to the UN.

The rebels recently captured the town of Bunagana on the border with Uganda.

DR Congo accuses Rwanda of backing the M23, which both Kigali and the rebels have consistently denied.

Mr Eazi took to his official Instagram page to celebrate after President Nana Akufo-Addo and Rwandan President Paul Kagame followed him on Twitter.

To him, the latest feat has placed him miles ahead of his colleagues. He, thus, asked that his respect be doubled.

“Ah I just saw this now!! Pls nobody should think of me w/o my permission. I’m not you people’s mate!!!,” he said in relation to President Akufo-Addo’s noble gesture.

For Mr Kagame’s notification, Mr Eazi said he is getting the tweet framed.

What God Cannot Do Does Not Exist. (E be like I go add this one to my Thank You God for keeping things running smoothly), he bragged.

The regime of President Kagame, who has ruled Rwanda since 1994 in effect, is accused of suppressing dissenting views.

International rights groups claim that opposition politicians, journalists, and activists both in Rwanda and abroad have also been killed or made to disappear after criticising Kagame or his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party.

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Mysterious deaths

Revocant Karemangingo, 2021

Millionaire businessman Revocant Karemangingo was sprayed with bullets by gunmen near his home in Maputo. The outspoken Kagame critic had settled in Mozambique after being ousted from his home country in 1994. The Rwandan government has denied any involvement in the killing. However, Cleophas Habiyaremye, president of the association of Rwandan refugees in Mozambique, rejects the denial. “If there is any real independent inquiry, Kagame and his government should be held responsible,” Cleophas Habiyaremye told DW.

Ntamuhanga Cassien, 2021

Rwandan journalist Ntamuhanga Cassien disappeared in Maputo in May after being taken into custody by Mozambican police and has not been heard from since. There are rumours he was handed over to Rwanda.

Abdallah Seif Bamporiki, 2021
The leading Rwandan opposition politician and member of the Rwanda National Congress was shot dead in South Africa, where he was living in exile. South African police initially said they were treating the killing as a robbery. A week before his murder, Bamporiki had led a memorial service for Rwandan opposition activists killed worldwide.

Gospel singer Kizito Mihigo was arrested in 2020 after attempting to cross into Burundi

Kizito Mihigo, 2020
The singer and government critic died under suspicious circumstances in police custody. Police claim Mihigo strangled himself — but days before his arrest, he reported to Human Rights Watch that he was being threatened.

Anselme Mutuyimana, 2019
The assistant to Victoire Ingabire, president of the opposition United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) party, was found dead in the woods in 2019. The year before, Mutuyimana had been freed from a six-year prison sentence for “political activism.”

Jean Damascene Habarugira, 2017
The opposition politician disappeared after being called to a meeting with an officer responsible for local security. A few days later, authorities called Habarugira’s family to collect his body from a local hospital.

Illuminee Iragena, 2016
The opposition activist went missing in 2016 and has not been seen since. There are fears she was forcibly disappeared. 

Patrick Karegeya, 2014
The former Rwandan intelligence chief was found dead in a hotel room in South Africa. He had fled to South Africa in 2007 after allegedly plotting a coup against President Kagame. According to a 2019 article in The Guardian, before his death, several Rwandans in South Africa had warned Karegeya that Rwanda’s military intelligence was looking to hire contract killers. 

Theogene Turatsinze, 2012
The former head of the Rwanda Development Bank was found dead in 2012 in a river near Maputo, days after he went missing. Before he was fired from his position, Turatsinze was believed to have taken with him to Mozambique a list of clandestine payments made by top Rwandan government officials.  

Charles Ingabire, 2011
The Rwandan reporter founded Inyenyeri Newssite, which was highly critical of Rwanda’s government. Ingabire was shot and killed in Uganda, where he lived as a political refugee.

Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, 2010
The deputy chairman of Rwanda’s Democratic Green Party was found murdered and partially beheaded in Rwanda in 2010. An inquiry into his murder by Rwanda’s Bureau of Investigation never saw the light of day. 

Jean-Leonard Rugambage, 2010 
The journalist was shot dead in 2010 after he published an online article about the attempted murder of a former army chief, Lieutenant-General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa. Rugambage was viewed as highly critical of  Kagame’s government.  

Seth Sendashonga, 1998  
A moderate ethnic Hutu involved in the post-genocide unity government with Kagame’s RPF party, Sendashonga served as interior minister until he fell out with the RPF before Kagame became president in 2000. Sendashonga survived an attempt on his life while in exile in Kenya, but was subsequently killed by unknown gunmen in 1998.  

Theoneste Lizinde, 1996
The former intelligence official was found dead in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1996. 

Suppressing the opposition 

Opposition politician Victoire Ingabire, who served eight years in prison, told DW in 2020 that the “political space in Rwanda is closed.”

Opposition politician Victoire Ingabire once told DW Rwanda’s political space is closed

At the time of the interview, Ingabire was the leader of the FDU-Inkingi opposition party. 

“I was in prison and spent eight years [there], and when I was released, I thought the government of Rwanda was ready to open up the political space. But one month later, our vice president disappeared. Four months later, my assistant was killed. In July, our representative in [an] eastern province disappeared; yesterday, our national coordinator was murdered,” Ingabira said in a 2020 interview with DW.  

Although Ingabire did not blame President Kagame for the murder of her party members, she said the killings were politically motivated, and warned that many more would die under the regime she described as a dictatorship. 

“Of course, I fear for my life. I know they can kill me any moment, but I will stay in my struggle because I know we need democracy in Rwanda,” the politician said.  

Sarah Jackson, deputy director of Amnesty International for East Africa, agreed that “being in the political opposition in Rwanda is quite dangerous.”  

Amnesty International had urged the Rwandan government to make its investigations into the killings public and credible. 

“It is incredibly worrying to see these rising cases of disappearances and the impact that this has on the broader political context in Rwanda,” said Jackson