Finalist — Government category: President Paul Kagame
No one gave post-genocide Rwanda a chance at peace, let alone development. President Paul Kagame was faced with multiple challenges, chief among them how to end the hatred of the two warring tribes in the tiny east-central African country.
Against the odds, he has managed to transform the shattered country into Africa’s biggest success story in less than 10 years. Kagame’s background may have helped make him what he has become.
As with many Rwandanese, he is a first-hand victim of ethnically charged violence. He grew up in the Nshungerezi refugee camp in Uganda, where his Tutsi family fled in 1959 when Kagame was only two to avoid Hutu extremists.
In Uganda he met President Yoweri Museveni, with whom he was involved through Museveni’s National Resistance Movement. Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army base was established in Uganda; from which he led the battle to end the genocide.
When the war ended in July 1994, a government of national unity was formed with a Hutu, Pasteur Bizimungu, as president. Kagame was vice-president and defence minister.
In 2000 the Transitional National Assembly elected Kagame president. He established unity and reconciliation commissions, based on traditional cultural models and aimed at rebuilding trust among the victims and the perpetrators of the genocide.
“People can be changed,” he has been quoted as saying. “Some people can even benefit from being forgiven, from being given another chance.”
He is widely recognised for bolstering investor confidence through his anti-poverty strategies and strong political leadership. His economic policies have encouraged the staple of agriculture, at the same time ushering in diversification by means of the industries of the future.
With a gross domestic product growth rate of 6% a year, Rwanda was recently named the World Bank’s top economic reformer. It is also one of the few countries in the world where women constitute more than 50% of the parliament.
Kagame recently won a landslide victory in an election to serve another seven-year term in office, which should be his last in terms of the constitution.
The judges praised Kagame as a driver of change for his role in leading Rwanda towards being one of the fastest-growing and fastest-transforming economies in the world. “Despite the challenges in his country, his leadership shows results for people on the ground,” the judges said.