How Kigali Was Branded for Investors, Not Rwandans

According to extensive ethnographic research published by the University of California Press, Kigali’s transformation was not primarily designed for the people who live there. It was engineered as a brand, a product tailored for foreign investors, donors, and global institutions, even if that meant demolishing real neighborhoods, erasing livelihoods, and displacing thousands of residents.

A City Rebuilt, or Rebranded?

The dominant global narrative claims Kigali was rebuilt after the 1994 genocide. Yet the research reveals a striking contradiction: the most aggressive destruction of Kigali did not occur in the 1990s, but well after 2008.

Beginning in July 2008, large-scale demolitions swept through the city. Entire neighborhoods were cleared in successive waves, Kiyovu cy’abakene, Gacuriro, Kimicanga, Nyabugogo Market, Kazaire, and later Bannyahe, as recently as 2022. These were not emergency post-war clearances. They were deliberate interventions tied to a new urban vision.

That vision was shaped with the help of American and Singaporean design and planning firms, hired by the Rwandan government in the early 2000s. Their task was explicit: transform Kigali’s image into a competitive destination for global capital.

In promotional materials, Kigali was presented as a “tabula rasa,” a blank slate ready for sustainable investment. But in reality, the city was never blank. It was lived in, built, and maintained by ordinary Rwandans.

To make the brand real, the city itself had to be reshaped, often through destruction.

Sustainability as a Justification for Displacement

The demolitions were rarely described as evictions. Instead, they were framed in the language of “green,” “modern,” and “sustainable” urbanism.

Neighborhoods were labeled “informal,” “unplanned,” or “environmentally unsustainable,” even when residents had paid for sanitation, electricity, and durable housing, and in many cases held legal land titles. Once classified as unsustainable, areas could be expropriated at low compensation and cleared for redevelopment aligned with the master plan.

Residents interviewed in the research were blunt about what was happening. One explained that the city was being redesigned for “trendy houses for white people,” while lower-income Rwandans were pushed further away from the urban core.

The problem was not disorder. The problem was who the city was being built for.

The Blair-Kagame-RDB Connection: A City Run Like a Corporation

Tony Blair became Kagame’s official adviser in 2008, helping form the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a hybrid government-corporate agency designed to fast-track foreign investment.

Kigali’s urban strategy was repackaged to climb the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” index, and the master plan evolved into a business plan, with the city’s poor as collateral damage.

The Fiction of Order and Zero Corruption

Kigali’s reputation for order is one of its strongest selling points. But the research exposes this too as a carefully maintained fiction.

City officials were aware that informal arrangements, negotiations, and everyday survival strategies existed, as they do in all African cities. Yet acknowledging them would undermine the brand narrative of total control and zero corruption.

Instead of adapting policy to lived reality, authorities enforced the image. The city had to look orderly, even if that meant ignoring how people actually lived and built their homes.

Order became not a tool of governance, but a tool of marketing.

‘Green City’ Marketing = Demolitions + Exclusion

Kigali’s “eco-friendly” urban plan, touted at Davos and climate summits, came at a devastating human cost. Areas like Bannyahe were labeled “unsustainable” to justify mass evictions, despite residents having built their own infrastructure. Families were expropriated after being labeled “informal.” But many had legal land titles and access to water, electricity, and sanitation, all paid for by residents themselves.

Why? The report concludes: “The problem wasn’t urban planning. It was ownership by the wrong people.”

A State Reoriented Toward Investors

Institutional reforms reinforced this direction. The creation of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a hybrid state-corporate entity, streamlined foreign investment by offering fast-tracked business registration and centralized access to government services.

Rwanda’s rapid climb in global “Ease of Doing Business” rankings was celebrated internationally. But this efficiency served one group above all: foreign investors.

For ordinary city residents facing eviction, there was no equivalent one-stop service. Their access to the city became conditional, temporary, fragile, and ultimately expendable.

When Tragedy Becomes a Sales Pitch

Perhaps most unsettling is how Rwanda’s tragic history was folded into this branding exercise.

The genocide became part of the marketing story, proof of resilience, a justification for starting over, and a moral narrative that encouraged outsiders to see Kigali as a city reborn from nothing. This framing made demolition easier to sell. If the city was already imagined as starting from scratch, then clearing neighborhoods could be portrayed as progress rather than loss.

But for the people who lived there, nothing was abstract. Homes, markets, and communities disappeared in the name of a future they were not invited to share.

The City That Had to Erase Itself

Kigali’s cleanliness and order are real. The new buildings and infrastructure exist. But so does the erasure.

The research shows that Kigali was not simply rebuilt after the conflict. It was rebranded for a global audience, and then forcibly reshaped to match that image. Sustainability language masked displacement. Order concealed exclusion. And development was measured by appearance rather than justice.

This article is sourced from research by Samuel Shearer. Read more here