Paul Kagame: ‘My third term is not a personal project – it’s about the people’

“It's not about me manipulating things. It’s a healthy thing that any society should be able to make decisions for itself,” said Rwanda's President Paul Kagame at the World Economic Forum on Africa this week.

He was answering a challenge to his decision to run for a third term in office in 2017, a decision that has been viewed as controversial by some in the West, while winning near unanimous approval from the Rwandan people themselves. (In a recent referendum, 98% of voters were in favour of the president making changes to the constitution that would allow him to stay in office.)

Kagame addresses this issue, among many more, in this video interview, answering questions as they come in live from the public.

It’s not hard to see why many view his leadership as a success. Rwanda’s fortunes are widely regarded as having improved dramatically, following a genocide in 1994 that killed 800,000 people and left the nation in cultural and economic trauma.

Not only have poverty levels rapidly fallen in the intervening 22 years, but Rwanda is now one of the fastest-growing economies in Central Africa, according to the World Bank, with recent GDP growth of around 8% per year. It is also a world leader on gender parity, with more women in parliament than any other nation; and exemplary green initiatives that include the largest solar power plant in Africa and a nationwide ban on plastic bags.

This article is part of our Africa series. You can read more here.

The World Economic Forum on Africa is taking place in Kigali, Rwanda from 11 to 13 May.