Migrants should want to go to Rwanda

The Supreme Court’s ruling that sending migrants to a former hostel in Kigali is illegal strikes another hammer blow to the government, not least because Rwanda gets to keep the £140 million that set up the proposed deal in the first place. Never mind what happens now – and this story is far from over – if I were a migrant about to take a small boat to Britain, the prospect of ending up here, where it’s easier to start a business than almost anywhere else in the world, would hardly be a deterrent. The facts are these: Rwanda was a broken country after the 1994 genocide. It had been one of the bloodiest of bloody killing fields, with up to one million people dead and a further two million displaced within 100 days – while the world watched in horror but did nothing. And yet, approaching the 30th inglorious anniversary of that human tragedy, Rwanda is the country many neighbouring African nations look to as some sort of beacon. It has one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa; there is little crime; 92 per cent of the population has medical insurance (at around $8 a year) and the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked it the fourth least corrupt country on the African continent behind the Seychelles, Botswana and Cabo Verde.

The liberal left doesn’t approve of Kagame for, among other things, the lack of a genuinely free press, the suppression of political opposition and his uninterest in LGBT rights. Homosexuality is legal but gay marriages and changing gender are strictly forbidden. Although, on the subject of gender equality, it is perhaps noteworthy that Rwanda is the first country in the world with a female majority in parliament (61.3 per cent).

Mind you, Kagame’s no orator. I was in Kigali for the grandly titled World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit, at which the President spoke at the opening session.