Kagame’s Economic Mirage

Authored by David Himbara 

Rwanda is a roaring African economic lion—or at least that’s what President Paul Kagame wants people to believe. But in Kagame’s Economic Mirageformer senior advisor David Himbara blows the whistle on Kagame and exposes the problems within the leader’s totalitarian regime.

Himbara, who served twice under Kagame, most notably as head of Kagame’s Strategy and Policy Unit from 2006 to 2010, explains why the math of Kagame’s supposed accomplishments simply doesn’t add up. Human rights advances have taken a back seat to Kagame’s push for economic prosperity, while boasts that a peasant economy is giving way to a dynamic, knowledge-based market are overblown and misguided at best. Steel yourself for this insider’s view of a corrupt political system that is holding citizens back from the promised future Rwandans deserve.

Kagame’s Economic Mirage is the unauthorized biography of the man behind the curtain as Rwanda’s president continues to con both residents and the West alike. This book exposes not only Kagame, but also the American and British support helping to prop him up. Rwanda remains one of the world’s poorest countries—not the “Singapore of Africa” that Kagame claims.

HimbaraAbout the author:

David Himbara, a scholar in residence at Centennial College in Toronto, Canada, is an educator, development strategist, and author with extensive experience in Africa.

His successes include coaching governments in Eastern and Southern Africa in vision- and evidence-based policymaking as part of Knowledge Management Africa. He joined others in establishing the World Bank’s Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results at the University of the Witwatersrand, which supports African governments’ efforts to monitor and evaluate capacity development. He has served as consulting team leader for several development agencies, including the African Development Bank, and as lead strategist for the UN Development Program in South Africa. While in Rwanda, Himbara served as head of the Strategy and Policy Unit, President’s Office, founding chairperson for the Rwanda Development Board, Institute for Policy Analysis and Research, and Human and Institutional Development Agency.