Sport as a soft power vector for Paul Kagame's Rwanda

The country is preparing to welcome the world cycling championships from Sunday. After having invested massively in European football, the regime confirms that sport is a major development and influence tool in the country.

The small country in the Great Lakes region will receive the world cycling championships from Sunday, September 21. The image will be worth the glance, and should make an impression. However, the detractors of President Paul Kagame consider that this is a vast operation of whitening his international image.

Accustomed to the collars of the Alps, the Pavés des Flanders or at the Ardennes mountains, the biggest stars of the peloton, from Tadej Pogacar to Remco Evenepoel via Julian Alaphilippe, will discover the hilly roads that surround the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, where they will fight to win the rainbow jersey.

The organization of road cycling Worlds is an event for this small country of less than 15 million inhabitants, which organizes for the first time a test of such a scale. The African continent is still unaccustomed to being awarded major international sports competitions, with the notable exception of South Africa, which has already organized a World Rugby World Cup in 1995, and a football world cup in 2010.

Rwanda and its president Paul Kagame therefore invited themselves into the big leagues, and confirm that sport is a major vector of soft power for the country. They do it with cycling, in continuity with the Tour of Rwanda, registered in the international calendar since 2009. The test attracts crowds to the edges of the roads, and serves as a springboard for African runners, who still counted on the fingers of the hand in the peloton. It is above all “The best window for the country“, According to his leader, who made the bet to invest a lot of money in sport to treat his image, and that of Rwanda, internationally.

A strategy developed in particular through a government organization called “Visit Rwanda”, which has built very important partnerships with the largest European football clubs. In recent years, the slogan has been displayed on the advertising panels of the most prestigious speakers on the continent, or on the sleeves of the jerseys of Paris Saint-Germain or the London club of Arsenal. A marketing blow that seems to bear fruit, if we believe the leap of visitors from the United Kingdom, with a tourist crowd that has tripled in recent years.

But this vast seduction operation also has its detractors. Internally, the Rwandan opposition denounces a public money mismanagement and the “madness of grandeur“From Paul Kagame. Critics also emanate human rights NGOs, who have been pointing” Sportwashing “orchestrated by a powerful president for 25 years.

Recently, German supporters from Bayern Munich denounced the bavarian club link with Bavarian club with Visit Rwanda, highlighting the authoritarian power in place in Kigali, until you obtain a revision of the partnership set up.

But the most virulent indignation comes from the neighboring country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the authorities and NGOs recall that Paul Kagame, despite his denials, plays an active role in the support of Rwanda to the rebels of the M23, accused of having committed massacres in the Kivu region, in the east of the country. The offensive conducted to Goma a few months ago, also prompted the European Parliament to claim the cancellation of these Worlds in Rwanda. It did not succeed, but the stars of stars like Pogacar should not overshadow this situation.