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Fineas speaks with Arthur Asiimwe, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Rwanda in Washington, D.C., about Rwanda's relationship with the United States and its ambitions for Africa. They discuss what the embassy does and the Rwandan diaspora it serves across the United States, how Rwanda presents itself to American investors as a gateway to the African continent, the East African Community, and how a country of 15 million thinks big, from nuclear energy and AI to sports. They also cover the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and three decades of reconciliation, how Rwanda built one national identity, women's empowerment and other policies behind its transformation, Rwanda's power-sharing approach to governance under President Paul Kagame, Mr. Asiimwe's path from journalism to diplomacy, and his advice for students considering a career in international affairs.
Arthur Asiimwe is the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Rwanda in Washington, D.C., his first diplomatic posting. He previously served for over a decade as Director General of the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency, Rwanda's national public broadcaster, and has served as President of the African Union of Broadcasters.
Transcript lightly edited for clarity. Click any timestamp to play the video from that moment.
Fineas I'm Fineas, founder of GeoPolitical Insiders, a site devoted to conversations with diplomats, policymakers, scholars, and national security experts about the forces shaping international affairs. Today, I'm privileged to be joined by Arthur Asiimwe, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Rwandan Embassy in D.C. He works to help build connections between Rwanda and the U.S., representing his home country while supporting the Rwandan community living here in the United States. Thank you, Deputy Chief Asiimwe, for joining me.
Arthur Asiimwe Thank you for having me.
Fineas Could you talk a little bit about the mission of the Rwandan embassy in the United States, and what the responsibilities of the embassy and the deputy chief of mission are?
Arthur Asiimwe Thank you so much for having me again. Our mission in Washington, D.C. is mainly centered around one big theme, and that is promoting excellent bilateral relations between Rwanda and the United States: bilateral relations in politics, in trade and investment, and in people-to-people relations. In all those areas, we make sure that the U.S. remains a very important strategic ally for Rwanda, that our relations stay warm and cordial, and that they are mutually beneficial for everybody. That, in a nutshell, is the core of our mission in Washington, D.C.
So we engage with members of the administration, Congress, the White House, think tanks. We develop trade, commerce, and investment, looking for business opportunities between the U.S. and Rwanda and connecting business people. It also involves looking after our diaspora here. We have a very big diaspora across the states of the U.S., and we make sure we give them the services they need as members of the diaspora. All of that is covered by ensuring that we promote and build excellent bilateral relations between the U.S. and Rwanda.
My job as the Deputy Chief of Mission is, I see myself as the chief operations officer for the embassy. So I cut across. We have diplomats in charge of different segments, different pockets of responsibility, and my job is to coordinate whatever they're doing and, of course, to assist the ambassador, because the ambassador is the boss. So I walk hand in hand with the ambassador to ensure that the operations of the embassy are smooth and working well.
Fineas So you oversee everything and help build stronger connections between the United States and Rwanda, but you also serve the diaspora community. How big is the diaspora community in America?
Arthur Asiimwe Our rough estimates are in the range of 50,000 to 60,000 Rwandans. The biggest concentrations of the diaspora, I would say, are in four states, including Arizona, Texas, and California. Those four states have the biggest concentration, but Rwandans are spread across other states as well.
Fineas And what kind of concerns or requests do Rwandans living across the United States, or visiting the United States, bring to the embassy? And how are you able to serve them?
Arthur Asiimwe The Rwandans in the United States are mainly looking for consular services. For example, someone wants to buy a property back home, so you need to issue a power of attorney, and we go through that. Students want to renew their passports, and they do that through the embassy. People have lost their national IDs. People want to sell a property back home and give someone at home the authority to do it on their behalf. The embassy is there to offer those services. And there are Rwandans who want to do business and trade, who want business opportunities back home, so we do some facilitation around that.
Fineas Can you give me some examples of ways the embassy builds bridges between Rwanda and the United States, and how it connects them economically?
Arthur Asiimwe Let me give you an example of an investment opportunity. A businessman wants to set up a business in Rwanda, and we say Africa, because we make Rwanda an entry point. Most American businesses and American investors have not explored the market so well. So when an American who wants to invest in Africa wants to see the opportunities there, we present Rwanda as a natural entry point, a gateway onto the continent of Africa.
For example, I think the last group we had were Americans opening up a high-end vineyard on the slopes of the mountains. They're putting up high-end villas and also planting a vineyard, and these are people from here, the U.S. Those are the kinds of investments. Another example: we are trying to go into nuclear energy, to improve and increase the power supply in our country. So we are negotiating with and engaging companies here that are experienced and have the skills and the technology to invest in nuclear energy. We do that kind of engagement, and all sorts of business opportunities and trade between Rwanda and the U.S., for American investors who want opportunities in Rwanda and Africa.
But we also have Rwandan business people who want opportunities here. People are bringing coffee; we're known for high-end, premium coffee. So we try to find markets for them. Tea, crafts, all those areas. Minerals: we've just signed a big mineral concession with one of the biggest tungsten processing companies, so we're supplying them with tungsten from Rwanda. In all those things, we make the connections to improve and increase commercial diplomacy.
Fineas Right. So Rwanda, as one of the more developed countries in Africa, is used by investors to get a foot in the door in Africa and then expand from there.
Arthur Asiimwe Yes. And I'm happy that you visited Rwanda. We have tried to make the business environment extremely conducive. We've put in place plans and policies that make the business environment attractive. And we always say, you know what, when most people think about Africa, they think about the negative side of Africa. But we say: if you want to test the African market, come to Rwanda. Look at what's on the ground, and then make a decision. I can guarantee you that once you go on the ground and see what's there, 99% of you will say that you've fallen in love with the country. Then we follow up with you and say, okay, take up these business opportunities.
Anchor your business in Rwanda, and if you want to expand into the larger African market, we even help you. Rwanda is a market of 14 million, but we are surrounded by a market of almost 700 million people, and it's an open market. So you anchor your business in Rwanda, and we're able to support you, guide you, and advise you on how to access the large markets that surround the country. That's our philosophy and how we want to approach opportunities in the American market: for people who have the desire to expand into Africa, Rwanda offers a unique opportunity to do that.
Fineas With Rwanda being that sort of in-between for America and Africa, could you talk a little more about the role Rwanda hopes to play in the political and economic future of Africa, and how a relatively small country can contribute to decisions that affect the continent as a whole?
Arthur Asiimwe I think it's simple. We just want to be a good example for Africa. We want to show that not everything in Africa is negative, that things in Africa can also work. And whatever we do is not only for Rwanda itself. We do it for the rest of our brothers and sisters on the continent. We're saying: if the Western world can achieve all these good developments, why not us? Our President, President Paul Kagame, is a very ambitious and very visionary man. He always challenges us, saying: if everyone else in the world has succeeded, why not we Africans? We are human beings like any others. Why should we depend on the American taxpayer to survive?
That has been a huge motivation and factor in the growth and development of Rwanda: showing that there can be a good apple on the African continent that serves as an example for the rest of the continent to emulate. So our vision has been to create a country that's functional, that is ambitious, that knows where it wants to go, and that is disciplined in whatever it does, so it serves as a good example for the rest of the continent. And I think we really are on that path. Of course, we still have a long way to go. I don't want to sit here with you and claim we've reached our development goals. No, we still have a long way. But the most important thing is that our leadership, under President Kagame, has laid a firm foundation, and that foundation has set us on a course to achieve whatever goals we have.
Fineas As a member of the East African Community, what opportunities do you see for Rwanda to deepen economic cooperation with its neighbors in the Great Lakes region? And how can diplomacy help ensure that those partnerships benefit ordinary people across borders?
Arthur Asiimwe The first task of diplomacy is to open doors for your country and to create friends for your country. You knock on people's doors and say: here is the country I represent, here are the opportunities you have, let's do business together. Take the East African Community. It's a big market, with countries like South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the DRC, and Burundi. Altogether it's a market of almost 700 million people, and there is a customs union, a common market, a free trade area, which means the borders are open for the free movement of goods and people. So it's a huge market that can be accessed from Rwanda itself.
What diplomacy does is engage all the stakeholders in whatever countries we are in, especially within that region, to do away with whatever bottlenecks or hurdles might affect the smooth running of trade across borders. It also ensures there are good relationships between the countries themselves, because for trade and investment to flourish, the politics has to work. You need excellent bilateral relations between the countries, and that's where diplomacy comes in, to make the connections around all those things.
Fineas Right. So the wider region has a population of around 700 million, like you said, which is obviously very significant, and Rwanda has a population of around 15 million, correct? So how is Rwanda able, even though it's relatively small for its region, to punch above its weight and be significant in those partnerships?
Arthur Asiimwe We don't look at ourselves as small. When you begin thinking of yourself as small, your mindset is bound to limit itself to thinking small. In Rwanda, we think big. Whatever we do, we think big, because we lost so many years to conflict, and so we came up with a very ambitious development agenda. In dealing and engaging with neighbors and friends, we don't look at ourselves as a small nation. We might be small in size, but our ambitions are big, and our ambitions are transformational.
Like I said, we serve a bigger market. With geographical boundaries being eliminated by trade agreements and free markets within our region, we don't see ourselves as a market of 15 million people. We see ourselves as a market serving 700 million plus. And Africa has the even larger African Continental Free Trade Area, which has been operational for the last several years and gives access to a market of 1.3 billion. So our thinking and our aspirations as a nation are always to dream big. Our President always challenges us to think big.
That's why you see us going into so many areas where some people say, oh, you're punching way above your weight. I've just told you about nuclear energy; it's going to be the first on the African continent. We're in advanced discussions, and we have targets. We're positioning Rwanda as a sports hub for Africa. If you follow closely, the Basketball Africa League started off from Rwanda, and it has become a big continental sporting opportunity. We are now going into UFC and WWE. And if you checked the news yesterday and today, we're going into Formula One, which is coming back to Africa after 30 years. So we don't look at ourselves as small in terms of geographical size. We think of ourselves as a nation among the community of nations, able to come up with very ambitious goals that ultimately serve one thing: changing the lives of our people.
Fineas Excellent answer, thank you. So through Rwanda's ambition, you've been going after these development goals, and Rwanda has been very successful over the past 30 years in achieving them. It's become a very well-developed country, and I found that very impressive when I was there.
Arthur Asiimwe Yes, but we're still mindful of the long journey ahead. There's always more to do. We have made modest development, but we cannot fall into a comfort zone. We are still very ambitious.
Fineas Could you talk a bit about Rwanda's nuclear goals?
Arthur Asiimwe Oh, yes, that's interesting. When we look at our current sources of energy, a big source is hydroelectricity. Given our future development and our ambitious goals, we think the current energy supply is not enough, so we want to diversify into new energy sources, and nuclear energy is one of those. We're now engaging with different U.S. authorities, government as well as the private sector, to see how we can reach agreements with companies here that have the technology to build a nuclear energy plant in Rwanda. We think that by 2035 we should have one up and running. It's what's called the SMR-300, small modular reactors. That's what we're focusing on.
One of the biggest development needs is building large data centers, because the world is going AI, and you can't talk about AI without data. To build data centers you need a lot of electricity. So one of the reasons we're going nuclear is that we need electricity that can power some of our needs in the innovation and technology space, especially AI.
Fineas And do a lot of these aspirations for data centers and nuclear energy involve a significant connection with the U.S., specifically through investment?
Arthur Asiimwe Oh, yes. Like I said, for nuclear we're in advanced negotiations with a U.S. private company. I'm not at liberty to reveal the name of the company now. We're also engaging and discussing with the Department of Energy on some regulatory issues. And on AI, of course, the U.S. is big. We've been engaging with different players, especially startups in Rwanda that could benefit from American AI technology. We need AI for all sorts of problem-solving: in the health sector, in education, in agriculture, in climate change. We need AI solutions, and we look to the U.S. as a source of partnerships for startups. That's an area we've been discussing heavily.
Fineas That's a lot about the future and present situation of Rwanda. I'd like to talk about Rwanda's history for a minute, and specifically the perception of it in America. What would you like most Americans to understand about Rwanda and its story, including the genocide, that is often missing from our understanding of the country today?
Arthur Asiimwe It's a little hard to talk about Rwanda's history in one minute, but one thing I can say is that we went through a terrible time. In 1994, during the genocide against the Tutsi, over one million people were killed. That was some 32 years ago. It was an ugly part of our history. But we were lucky. After the genocide, we got good, clean leadership that tried to reconcile and unite Rwandans. For the last 32 years, it has been a work in progress of reconciling and uniting Rwandans. Today, if you put it on a scale, I'd say 98 or 99 percent of people live together in peace and harmony.
We know what happened in our history. We have forgiven, but we have also refused to be held hostage by history. We now move together as one people. We speak the same language, we share the same culture, the same everything. Whatever divided us, we put in our past, and we built one identity that we call Ndi Umunyarwanda: I am Rwandan. We don't see ourselves through the ethnic lens of Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. We see ourselves in one mirror, as one people, and that has been the engine of our reconciliation. I'm happy that Rwandans have embraced it so well.
Because of that, we've been able to embark on the socio-economic transformation of our country, building on the unity of our people to ensure that the lives of Rwandans improve. The data you'll see out there gives a very positive picture: Rwanda has been transformed in almost all aspects of life. Look at life expectancy, now around 70 years. Look at incomes; we're on the path to becoming a middle-income country. Look at economic growth; GDP growth has been consistent. That transformation has been enabled by many things, but I'd point to two. One is the clean leadership of our leaders. Number two is Rwandans accepting to be a united force. That is their strength.
Fineas So you would say that in the wake of the genocide, Rwanda chose not to dwell on the past, but to move forward and really work on improving its situation.
Arthur Asiimwe Correct, correct.
Fineas That's the economic side of the aftermath of the genocide. But more personal to the nation: how has Rwanda worked to rebuild a shared national identity since 1994? And what does being Rwandan mean to the younger generations who didn't experience the genocide themselves?
Arthur Asiimwe Being Rwandan means you enjoy equal rights as a Rwandan. The genocide was largely possible because of decades of divisive, sectarian politics in Rwanda, with people segregated based on their ethnicity. That was very bad, and it was something inherited from the colonial powers. It's a long history: how the Belgians came in and divided people, and how the leaders who came after the colonialists left continued that trend of dividing people, leading to the genocide.
For the past 32 years, it has been a work in progress of saying: there's nothing significant that divides us as Rwandans. Whether you're Tutsi or Hutu or Twa, we're all Rwandans. Like I told you, we speak the same language, we have the same culture, we marry each other. We're one. History, and people who wanted to conquer and rule over us, divided us. That was a sad part of our history. But now we need to move ahead and form a new identity. Yes, you might be Tutsi, you might be Hutu. That's fine; keep that in your house and your home. But at the end of the day, we are one people. And thanks to initiatives from the leadership, we have embraced the new value of saying: I am Rwandan.
A young Rwandan today was born into an environment where there's no segregation. They feel they are one, because they have equal access to opportunities, just like any other person. There's no favoritism, there's no segregation, it's meritocracy. These young Rwandans have grown up in a very good environment, and they're the future of Rwanda. That's why I am 100 percent confident that what happened to us decades ago will never happen again, because we have built a foundation where we see ourselves as one. Any division that happened before only delayed our development and made us a laughingstock in the world of nations. We don't want to go back to that.
We have been very lucky that Rwandans have learned from history and have accepted to live in peace and harmony. Today we really don't see ourselves in the mirror of ethnicity. We see ourselves as one. Like I told you, it has been the basis for the transformation you see in our country today.
Fineas Right. So through strong leadership, Rwanda was able to move forward, and it decided that national identity and ethnic identity don't have to be the same thing. There can be one national identity with many ethnic identities. Everyone speaks Kinyarwanda, right? It's one country moving forward.
Arthur Asiimwe Yes. You see, for example, America is full of people from all walks of life. There's no single American ethnicity. Anyone can be American, from anywhere in the world. If you're Rwandan and you're in America, you're American. And you become proud: you carry the American flag, you're able to defend the American flag, and you're proud to be American, regardless of where you came from. Rwanda doesn't have to be different.
Fineas We've talked about President Paul Kagame, but a little more specifically: looking at Rwanda's transformation over the past three decades, what specific policies or institutions have made the greatest difference in people's everyday lives? And where does the most work still need to be done?
Arthur Asiimwe I'd say it's really cross-cutting, across all sectors. I wouldn't say any area has been left behind, because our development has been inclusive. Let me give an example: women. Women constitute about 51 percent of our population, more than half. And we said, if we're talking about inclusive development, inclusive growth of the economy and of our people, you cannot talk about improving people's lives without taking along the biggest portion of your population and empowering women. That's why we came up with very affirmative policies that empower women and strengthen women's voices.
In traditional African societies, women were mostly left to do household chores and were not really active players in the life of the nation. But we made a political decision as a nation, under the leadership of President Kagame, to empower women to move alongside men as able Rwandans in the advancement of their country. I think one of the reasons we've seen consistent growth of our economy and improvement in the lives of our people is because of policies we took, such as empowering women. Most sectors, in the economy, politics, and social life, have seen tremendous growth and improvement.
And in equal measure, almost every sector still has a long journey ahead in achieving what we want. For example, the world is talking about AI, and we want to make Rwanda a center of innovation, a center of AI technology for the continent. So we have to be very ambitious in that field. Or take space. The space industry is now a trillion-dollar industry, dominated by, I would say, the U.S. and China, and Africa is absent. But we need a voice there, because space is also part of Africa, so we need to be there. We've talked about energy self-sufficiency on the continent: if we're talking about development and big projects, building infrastructure, you need a lot of energy, and so you have to diversify energy sources. So, like I said, it's a work in progress in almost all sectors. Where we have made very good progress, we still have to sustain it, and we need to make sure we attain our ambitions.
Fineas So really, Kagame's success can be attributed to making sure that Rwanda is part of all the new economic waves in the world, real care for his country, and making sure that everything is being developed, including bringing women up in that development as well.
Arthur Asiimwe You could say that. But you could also say that the President and the government are driven by the desire for Africans not to think they are inferior to anyone; to think that Africans, just like their colleagues around the world, can improve their lives and make them much better. We have brains, we have hands, we have eyes, just like any other human beings. We have natural resources; we've been blessed with good weather. There's no reason why we should not be advanced in our development. For me, as a student of President Kagame's politics, that's the basis of his vision: that Africa, and Rwanda, can become developed just like any other country in the Western world.
Fineas That's amazing. So it's really that aspiration to become better, because you know that you can.
Fineas President Kagame challenges Western ideals of government that treat traditional democracy as the only viable way to have a stable nation. Despite that, during his 26-year tenure as president, he's transformed the nation from a country divided by decades of ethnic conflict into a nation that's tangibly more developed than many of its neighbors. What do most people in the U.S. misunderstand about Rwanda's approach to governance?
Arthur Asiimwe People think that democracy is one size fits all. But democracy should be tailored to the context of your country. We can't take the democracy you have in the U.S. as the same template for every country. It must fit the context on the ground. Your governance system must be answerable to the situation and the challenges on the ground. For Rwanda, we came out of a genocide, and the genocide was fueled by bad politics. So we had to think about a model that stabilizes the country: a democratic model that might not fit the classical democratic system, but that tries to answer our challenges and problems as they come.
That's why we came up with the Constitution in 2003, which had some cornerstone pillars answering decades of mismanagement and political divisions in our country. One of them is that in our political system there must be power sharing. For example, in the American system you have the dominant parties, Republicans and Democrats. When Republicans win, everybody from the Democrats leaves, and nobody from the Democrats is in the new administration. But in Rwanda, we say we have to share. When President Kagame's party, the RPF, wins, it has to share power with the other political parties competing with it. The ruling party can only take 50 percent of cabinet slots. The other 50 percent have to come from other political parties.
Here you might call that bipartisan politics, but it's something we put in our constitution to ensure harmony in our political structures, so that everybody feels included in the development and political decisions being taken for the country. A typical student of classical democracy here won't understand it. You think that if the Democrats have won, they take everything. We think that if one party has won, it can still include the others in the government, because the other parties may also have good policies they want to implement. So power sharing became a very important pillar of our democracy. It was basically about saying we need to create stability and make sure everybody is included in decision-making, and that has produced a stable political environment for us to embark on our development goals.
Something else people mistake about President Kagame: he is very strong on discipline and on accountability. He wants results. He wants things done. If you fail to match his demand for accountability, you're likely to fall off the cliff. Some detractors, because of that strong desire for discipline in everything he does, convert it into criticism, calling it dictatorship. But we in Rwanda understand it very well. A society that went through a genocide needs a leader who demands results, a leader who is not going to tolerate nonsense, a leader who will not allow people to bring back divisive politics. To be honest with you, I think we were just lucky that after the genocide we had President Kagame. And in all fairness, his record and results show it all.
Fineas So he's very disciplined and makes sure the results come. But despite Rwanda having had the same leader for the better part of three decades, there is still an element of power sharing, where other ideas can still be heard in government. So there is still that communication.
Arthur Asiimwe Yes, yes. Every political party in Rwanda that is legally registered is involved in government, either in the cabinet or in high positions.
Fineas I have a personal question for you. Could you tell us a little about your own path to becoming a diplomat working at the embassy here in the U.S.? Were there any particular experiences or turning points that led you to this work and shaped the way you represent Rwanda today?
Arthur Asiimwe First of all, Washington, D.C. is my first diplomatic posting. I've been here almost two and a half years, coming up on three. I was lucky that before, I used to work in the media. My job immediately before being posted here was Director General of the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency, the head of the national public broadcaster, public TV and public radio. I did that job for over ten years. From there, I was appointed Deputy Chief of Mission here at the embassy in Washington, D.C.
Largely, I think media and diplomacy are like twins. They go hand in hand. Once you're a journalist, a reporter, your job is to network, to get sources and make friends, to engage people and come up with a story through your networks. And diplomacy is also about making new friends, just like I've met you today as a friend of mine, you and your dad. Thank you for visiting Rwanda. It's about networking, it's about engaging, it's about telling your story. I think the appointing authority thought that with my background in the media, I would make a good diplomat. And that's how I found myself in Washington, D.C.
Fineas Congratulations on your first posting.
Fineas And just a last question: what advice would you give to a high school or college student considering a career in international affairs?
Arthur Asiimwe Wow, that's a tough one. I think, first, for a person like you: begin at an early age to think about your future and your professional goals. When you start early enough, you're able to work towards them as you go through your academic life, and reach them. But most important, and I say this from my own experience, is to have some degree of discipline in your life, especially as young people. There are so many things in this world, as a young man, that are going to sway you, disrupt you, and hurt you, so you fail to attain your goals. So discipline is very key, discipline in whatever we do in our lives.
For me, also patience. You have to be patient. It's very good to be ambitious, but at times things don't unfold the way you want. Be patient, and be consistent in what you do, and things will fall into place. And make sure you're known for being effective in delivering whatever you are tasked to do. It's embarrassing when someone gives you a task and then comments that you failed to do it. So always, even with a small task, if someone has challenged you with it, do it, so you can say, 'I've done it,' and someone says, 'That's good.' Even if you've been given something extremely difficult, they'll see that you tried to do it, as opposed to failing to do whatever has been put before you. And know where you want to go, and understand that it might take some time.
Fineas All right, well, thank you. That's all I have for you today. I really appreciate you doing this.
Arthur Asiimwe Thank you so much. Thank you for visiting Rwanda, and hopefully you're going to keep being a friend of Rwanda.
Fineas I would absolutely love to come back. It's at the top of my list of countries I'd like to return to.
Arthur Asiimwe Excellent. Excellent.
Fineas I recommend it strongly to anyone listening.
Arthur Asiimwe Please do, please do.