When walking the streets of Kigali today, it is hard to imagine it being the location where a gruesome event conspired in the recent past. The new-looking streets of Rwanda’s capital are clean and illuminated. Well-dressed passers-by stare into their phones, heedless of the bustling city around them. Nothing reminds the observer of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that took place here.

Less than twenty years after the country hit rock bottom, Rwanda now serves as an example for African countries regarding inclusiveness and economic growth. Rwanda, for example, has the world’s highest proportion of women in government, occupying 63% of the seats in parliament. As for the Rwandan economy, the country’s GDP annual growth rate averaged 7.2% between 2000 and 2022.

The man overseeing Rwanda’s transformation is Paul Kagame. Serving as the president of Rwanda since 2000, Kagame used to be a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and helped bring an end to the genocide.

Instead of just surviving in the wake of the national tragedy, Paul Kagame has, in his own words, “focussed on charting a path forwards to property’’. His strategy has revolved around three pillars: building national unity and social cohesion, promoting inclusive citizen-oriented governance, and focussing on technological development.

Kagame identifies building national unity and social cohesion as essential, claiming that the resulting security is foundational for any type of progress. To this end, the government has advocated forgiveness and rehabilitation for the Rwandan genocide’s perpetrators.

Following the 1994’s events, almost one-tenth of Rwandans, approximately 600,000 people, confessed to having participated in the violence. Recognizing the need to involve these people in rebuilding the country, their prison sentences were reduced if they admitted to their crimes and apologized to the victims’ families.

Kagame also ordered the removal of ethnicity from citizens’ national identity cards, and to prevent hate from remerging, harshly punished people, including politicians, who practice divisive speech. The regulation on speech, while limiting freedom, has kept Tutsi-Hutu relations peaceful and helped keep Rwanda conflict-free.

The second pillar of President Paul Kagame’s strategy is promoting inclusive citizen-oriented governance. Identifying the role of inequality in Rwanda’s past violent episodes, Kagame put equality at the heart of governance. To this end, he worked to realize equal access to education for all. In addition, he promoted women’s leadership in the country's reconstruction.

Having equality as a fundamental principle for national reconstruction, Kagame aims to give every Rwandan equal opportunities and treatment regardless of gender, ethnicity, or disability.

The last pillar of Rwanda’s national strategy toward prosperity is a focus on technological development. According to Kagame, a technological orientation is crucial to changing the mindsets of Rwandans from closed to open and from dependent to self-reliant. To this end, the government aims to connect the country to the wider world by increasing mobile phone and internet adoption and providing youth access to advanced education.

By partnering with South Korea’s largest telecom provider, the Rwandan government built a 4G network. Now, 95 percent of Rwandans can access high-speed internet. This connectivity facilitates the service sector, which has grown to be the Rwandan economy’s largest and fastest growing sector.

Besides the government’s three-pillared strategies, Rwanda’s rise towards prosperity is also facilitated by the president’s actions.

Kagame is a businessman who succeeded in establishing lucrative deals with figures such as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and James Sinegal, one of the founders of Costco. For example, the president of Rwanda called Sinegal and convinced him to visit his country, after which the two men agreed on a deal to see Rwandan coffee beans used for Costco products.

Kagame promotes the importance of entrepreneurship and claims that trade has always been the most important thing to enable transformation in Rwanda. According to him, relying on others and trading with them builds the communities crucial to realizing a prosperous society.