Kagame’s Week: Purpose Over Fear and Security Red Lines
Kigali — In two high-profile appearances this week, President Paul Kagame set out a sharp message on Africa’s future, Rwanda’s security red lines in eastern Congo, and public safety at home.
The first was a more than three-hour press conference on Monday, 24 August 2026, at the Kigali Convention Centre. The second was a presidential panel the following day at the inaugural Africa Mindset Reset Forum, also in Kigali. Together they formed one of Kagame’s most wide-ranging public interventions of this Week
“Choose purpose over fear”
At the Africa Mindset Reset Forum on 25 August, Kagame told young Africans to stop waiting for permission to shape their own lives and societies. Meaningful change, he said, begins with the courage to make difficult choices and reject circumstances they do not want.
He recalled his own youth: hardship became a reason to challenge conditions rather than accept them as permanent. “Together with others, we decided to shape the kind of life we wanted, irrespective of the fact that the life we were looking for might not be lived,” he said.
His most quoted line of the week was aimed at aspiring leaders: try, fail, learn, and stay the course. Africa, he argued, does not need a generation afraid of failure. It needs one willing to act. “Even if you are fearing to make a mistake, you are already making a mistake by not doing anything.”
Kagame criticised what he called a continental habit of admiring success elsewhere without asking why similar results cannot be produced at home. “Why can’t we do things that make us admire ourselves?” he asked. The mindset of constantly looking outside Africa, he said, reduces Africans to “subjects of all kinds of dictates.”
He also returned to a familiar theme: “The Africa we want” has been repeated for years. The continent has people and resources, yet still talks about the Africa it needs instead of building it. “We have to match what we say and what we want with what we do and then be able to see the results. There are no two ways about it.”
The two-day forum, hosted under the theme “From Pan-Africanism to Meta-Africanism,” brought together more than 2,500 participants in Kigali and thousands more online. Kagame appeared alongside former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, Ghana’s Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, and African Development Bank President Sidi Ould Tah.
FDLR remains Rwanda’s non-negotiable
The Monday press conference was dominated by eastern Congo. Kagame repeated a line he said he could say “100 times”: Rwanda’s problem has always been the FDLR in Congo. If that threat is not resolved, Rwanda will remain involved. “There are no two ways about it.”
He dismissed recent Kinshasa-FDLR disarmament talk as superficial and, in his view, evidence that the Congolese government knows the group is present and has collaborated with it. Former FDLR combatants at Rwanda’s Mutobo demobilisation centre, he said, describe being armed and integrated into Congolese forces.
On Western sanctions targeting Rwanda’s military and senior officers, Kagame was blunt. Sanctions create problems, he said, but they only add new problems to old ones. They do not address root causes. “Instead of sanctioning FDLR or those who work with them or support them, they sanction those who fight them. I mean, I don’t understand the logic.”
He rejected the idea that Rwanda started the current conflict or should be treated as its main cause. The origin, he said, lies in Congo itself and in years of mishandling by Kinshasa and the international community. Rwanda wants peace, he added, “to the point that we are ready to fight for it.” Protection of the country would continue “day or night,” “at any cost.”
Crackdown on deadly alcohol and other domestic issues
Kagame also used the press conference to warn producers and sellers of substandard alcohol. Poor-quality drinks have killed people, he said, sometimes immediately and sometimes slowly. A country that watches its citizens die from such products is not doing its job. Those involved, he said, should prepare to be confronted. “Things will be put in proper order.”
He confirmed Rwanda’s interest in becoming a stakeholder in the planned Dangote petroleum refinery in Kenya, while stressing that talks remain early. He also discussed the slow implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, saying the framework was a good first step but that Africa is still not capturing the benefits it should.
The through-line
Across both events, Kagame’s message was consistent: Rwanda will not outsource its security; Africa must stop admiring others and start delivering for itself; and leaders and citizens must act rather than talk.
Whether the week changes anything on the ground in eastern Congo or in African governance remains to be seen. The words themselves, however, were among the clearest Kagame has offered in months.
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