Behind Rwanda’s World Cycling Debut, a Regime Carefully Curating Its Image

Twenty-one-year-old Samuel Niyonkuru has never seen Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, so busy. For the first time in the Union Cycliste Internationale’s (UCI) 103-year history, the prestigious Road World Championships were held on the African continent, with Rwanda the gracious host at the helm. With over 900 cyclists attending and nearly one million spectators at the week-long event’s peak, the stability that the nation emanates amid a restive region has never been more important.

Nicknamed the “Land of a Thousand Hills,” this tiny East African nation is perhaps best known for a remarkable turnaround after a brutal genocide. In 1994, a Hutu-led extremist government spearheaded a 100-day killing spree that left nearly one million ethnic Tutsis dead. 

Paul Kagame has been Rwanda’s president for a quarter of a century. For years, Kagame has been cultivating Rwanda’s reputation as a reliable, regional peacemaker. He has sent disciplined troops wielding sophisticated weapons to stabilize hot zones such as Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado (the site of the African continent’s most significant foreign investment, a $24.5 billion offshore liquified natural gas project) and to the Central African Republic, which has been marred by years of civil war. 

Under Kagame’s leadership, Rwanda’s GDP surged and continues to do so (rising 8.4% between 2022 and 2024). “People recognize what the RPF has succeeded in doing — no regime has lasted that long. Under the RPF, it’s the longest period of stability since independence,” says Benjamin Chemouni, Assistant Professor at Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, focusing on African politics and development.

Hosting such a major international sporting event “shows that Rwanda knows how to speak the global language of sports events, that it is an effective sub-Saharan African country that knows how to organize events, get things done,” says Chemouni. 

This plays into Rwanda’s broader strategy of pivoting to luxury tourism, which serves as a conduit to expand into the service sector, explains Chemouni. Such strategies build trust with the West, hedging the nation’s reputation and creating political space not only for Kagame to meet influential people but also to get some slack. “Rwanda has a binary stance on the international scene: meddling in Congo, but on the other hand, they are a stabilizing force. It’s the only country in the region on a strong upward trajectory, where donors have invested so much,” says Chemouni.

Widely touted as the West’s ‘donor darling’ — receiving $197 million from the United States in 2024 — Rwanda’s success is aspirational to both African nations and the Global North countries that fund them. Yet the undeniable orderliness, safety, and cleanliness that Kigali projects masks Rwanda’s darker intentions. Intelligence is ubiquitous — from officers stationed throughout the city to rampant use of spyware targeting activists, journalists, and politicians — Kagame’s regime squashes freedom of the press and dissent. It is not irregular for journalists to disappear or be killed under suspicious circumstances. Thirty years later, trauma from the genocide is palpable in civilians’ hushed tones and fear to relax, toe out of line, or question authority. 

In Rwanda, cycling is the second most popular sport after football. Over recent years, there have been surges in popularity for both competitive and recreational riding. The nation’s 2030 National Sports Policy advocates for living a healthy lifestyle through sports. 

These rolling hills, where coffee and tea are cultivated, serve as training grounds for Niyonkuru, his teammates, and increasingly, African cycling teams who seek out heart-breaking slopes to push themselves into elite athletes. Born and raised in the eastern district of Rwamagana, Niyonkuru began cycling seriously 4 years ago. 

“Everyone cycles here [to get around],” he says, “But I started getting pretty good, and wanted to take things further.” A member of Team Amani, a Kenya-based cycling team for East African riders established in 2018, Niyonkuru, a competitor in this year’s UCIs, already has his eyes set on the next one in Montreal, Canada.

Spread out over 8 days, this Rwandan iteration of the UCI is the most difficult to date, with 5475 meters of elevation gain over 267.5 kilometers for the men’s elite race and 3350 meters of gain over the women’s 164.6-kilometer race. To cover the event, a colleague and I jumped in the press shuttles hurtling ahead of the racers, stopping at various viewpoints to photograph. “The last time I biked a hill like this, I stopped in the middle to vomit,” my fellow journalist recalls.

There’s more than just the honor of hosting the first world cycling championships — a historically Eurocentric sport — in Africa. The races are an opportunity to siphon foreign traffic into the nation at a time where tourism is a priority (throughout Kigali, it’s difficult to walk 100 meters without bumping into a ‘VISIT RWANDA’ sign or billboard) and to showcase Rwandan skillset and infrastructure at a time when East Africa’s visibility on global sports radar is expanding beyond Kenya’s marathon runners.

Hosting the UCIs goes even beyond sportswashing, according to Ladd Serwat, a senior Africa analyst at Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED). “It’s part of Kagame’s strategy to showcase their developmental state approach — to some extent, with success.”

For years, Kagame has denied interventions in neighboring eastern Congo — namely, backing the M23 rebel group that took control of major eastern strongholds, beginning in Goma this past January. An estimated 7,000 were killed in the process, and at least a quarter of a million were displaced. It was yet another bloody period for a country that has witnessed ongoing conflict for decades, with civilians bearing the brunt of targeted psychological, sexual, and physical assaults aimed at dehumanizing and lowering morale. 

The undeniable orderliness, safety, and cleanliness that Kigali projects masks Rwanda’s darker intentions.

Eighteen-year-old Yip Hon Man, a cyclist from Hong Kong competing in the men’s U23 (under 23 years of age) who took gold in February’s Asia Championships, was eager to come to Kigali for the UCI. Like many of the racers, it is his first time on the continent. “Everything is peaceful and stable,” he says, “Really organized. I thought it would be a bit messy or chaotic, but it’s all very organized, modern.” 

Man’s fellow teammate, 17-year-old Lee Wan Chun, agrees. “It was my dream to be here — it’s much more beautiful here than I imagined,” he shares from the Hong Kong box, sandwiched in between Denmark and China. “I’m impressed by the skills of the African riders.” His friend nods in agreement. “The Singapore of Africa,” Chun chuckles.

Naturally, it is in Rwanda’s interest to bring visitors in so they can see the country’s successes for themselves, according to Serwat. “It’s tying Rwanda’s foreign involvement to the domestic. What a cycling event like this does is bring a lot of people into a country to show it’s stable and peaceful, and also to show that there’s sufficient road infrastructure around the country. This has been a big accomplishment of the RPF,” Serwat says. “It does speak to Rwandan success, the push of their reputation,” 

“It’s part of ruling politicians’ strategy to showcase development externally — leveraging that as a point of credibility and legitimacy, especially to western donors,” the researcher continues. “This bleeds into broader aims of portraying a certain developmental approach: we can have a tourism sector because things are stable, at a level beyond neighboring countries such as eastern DRC, Burundi, and to some extent, Uganda.”

“With everything that Rwanda has going on in eastern DRC, Rwanda will continue with these international events, generating tourism at this particular moment, which is coming at the ignorance of tourists and sports agencies.”