Seeds of Change in Rwanda

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Kagame's misgivings about foreign powers leads to his suspicion about aid. "In the last 50 years, you've sent $400 billion in aid to Africa, but if you look back, what is there to show for it?" he asks. "Why should the West spend so much without bothering whether that is making a difference? How does Africa accept that its affairs are run by ngos and other groups from outside? It's really something that needs to be corrected." So Rwanda is trying to build a new model of development. Though foreign assistance makes up around a third of Rwanda's gdp, Kagame refuses to limit himself to talks with aid organizations and foreign governments. "This and that department, the World Bank, human rights blah blah blah, over and over, it becomes so boring," he says. He's also courting corporate America. In the last few years, Kagame has met with the bosses at Microsoft, Google, eBay, Starbucks, Costco, Merrill Lynch and Bechtel. He's hosted Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz and CEO Jim Donald, and in March was the star speaker at the coffee giant's AGM, at which he described Starbucks and Rwanda as parts of an "extended family very closely linked by the business we do together and the passion we share." Says Schilling: "It's like this great love affair. Rwanda is becoming America's African sweetheart."

This is no casual fling. Either in a private or philanthropic capacity, or as part of doing business, American CEOs are now assisting Rwanda on energy, water, a railroad from Tanzania and IT. Scott Ford, the CEO of Alltel, is advising the Minister of Infrastructure, Google is donating software while eBay decided to build an ecolodge. Since March, the hills of Rwanda have been teeming with thousands of bright green "coffee bikes," designed by mountain-bike maker Tom Ritchey with a lengthened frame to carry a sack of coffee. This isn't all about altruism. Illinois-based stock trader Dan Cooper, who set up Friends of Rwanda with partner Joe Ritchie to coordinate what he calls "this contagious enthusiasm," says: "You get the head of Texaco/Chevron calling Kagame and asking him: 'Can you help me with Ethiopia?'" Meanwhile in Washington, Kagame's new friends fixed him a meeting with the then House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert that helped lead to a write-off of Rwanda's debt. "There is no African nation that carries as much favor with corporate America," says Cooper. "These people don't invest in Africa because they don't have a tolerance for corruption and all that garbage. But when they sit down with Kagame, they realize something here is different."

Though Kagame's authoritarianism worries human-rights groups, the commercial world has no such qualms. American Chris Lundh is CEO of RwandaTel, the country's Internet and mobile-phone giant, and has worked in telecoms across Africa. Asked about Kagame's human-rights record, he replies: "So what? In Congo, they'd shoot them." Kagame and business, he says, prize the same thing: results. "There is a focus here. People whinge about the lack of political opposition. But if you look at what happened in 1994, lack of opposition looks pretty small fare." Dabbs Cavin, 42, a lawyer and commercial banker, moved with his wife and family from Arkansas to Rwanda last year to set up an arm of the microcredit lender Opportunity International and merge it with a local bank. "Kagame has a vision, he's doing all the right things, and that's attractive," he says. "No country has ever risen as fast, and from as low a point. It's an exciting thing to be part of."

Many ngos inside Rwanda share that view. Says Schilling, who has worked in Africa for 20 years: "This project wouldn't work anywhere else. It would get picked apart, taken over, held up or crushed by corruption. Here you have an honest government with the political will to develop the country." Ruxin says Kagame is fixing an old problem. "How do countries develop? Enterprise. What made us think that institutions set up to fix Europe after World War II would do well at African poverty in the 21st century?"

In Nyamata, Jacqueline Nyiramayonde, 42, describes her journey across the country in 1994, as she fled the genocide with her children. She was living in Kigali when the killing started, then spent a week with her boy and girl hiding behind a cupboard in a neighbor's house. When the killing reached the street outside, the neighbor took her and the children to a military camp. The génocidaires showed up there asking for them, so he hid the family under some sacks of rice on a truck heading south to Butare. They were discovered en route at a Hutu militia roadblock, but the truck driver bought their freedom. Once in Butare, Jacqueline was reunited with her husband and the family hid for a further three years. Finally in 1998, with their home in Kigali destroyed, they returned to their ancestral village, Nyamata. Four years later, it was still littered with bodies. "My three brothers and two sisters had been killed," she says. "My uncle was killed with all his children. My husband also lost all his brothers and sisters. We lost all hope."

But in the ruins of Nyamata, they found some orphans from their extended family. Jacqueline and her husband eventually added five to their own three. "And that was when I started thinking of the future again. If the children were there, we had to work for them." Jacqueline opened a small stall, baking bread and sewing dresses. In time, it became a shop. Her husband began working a small farm, growing maize, sorghum, sweet potatoes and cabbages and tending two cows. Since 2005, he has also sat on the Nyamata traditional court, presiding over genocide reconciliation hearings. "We have many problems with all these children. But I believe the future will be better for them. They will study and they will become entrepreneurs. And Rwanda will forget the past and be united." Such an oblique reference to the genocide makes me realize that, in all her descriptions of 1994, Jacqueline has not once used the words Hutu or Tutsi. When I ask why, she says she prefers the term Rwandans. "Our children's future will be bright," she says. "It's the same for our Rwanda."