Arsenal's Visit Rwanda sponsorship lucrative deal, no charity

Colin Millar, a football journalist wrote an article, on February 21, titled, “Arsenal’s Visit Rwanda sponsorship and the dark side to a hideous sportswashing agenda.”

Millar ventured into a field where he showed he is a total stranger. Trying to combine sports reporting, politics and human rights could not make the stew he is used to cooking.

To start with, the two top flight European professional football clubs, Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain, both have multi-million sponsorship agreements with the Rwandan government, as Millar says. Yes, the “sponsorship agreements” are not about charity. Instead, they are about good business to attract people from all over the world to visit Rwanda.

It’s not about President Paul Kagame giving away sponsorship money because he is an Arsenal fan as Millar and other global north writers before him have tried to make the world believe.

“Watch any match involving Arsenal or Paris Saint-Germain and the message is impossible to miss,” Millar rightly says.

What he does not mention is that of the millions of viewers who watch the Visit Rwanda advert; a good number visit Rwanda and spend thousands of dollars there. These tourists will fly with RwandAir, crisscross the country guided by local tour operators, stay in hotels, and visit wild life in national parks. All their expenditure boosts Rwanda’s economy.  

There are other people from the global north who think like Millar. For these minds, African countries such as Rwanda should not engage in big investments. Some of them so often remind leaders on the continent that the poor African countries are using their money. Such ill framed stories have been around for some time.  

When the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi had just ended, Rwanda did not have a five star hotel. But because Rwanda’s leadership had a vision to position Rwanda as an international conference destination, the first five star hotel was built. The ‘donors’ and people like Millar criticized the government decision the same way they are doing now with the Arsenal and PSG deals.

After the hotel was completed, the same people who were criticizing the government were the first to book rooms because it was of good standard. The hotel was later privatized and is currently called the Kigali Serena.

In recent years, Rwanda invested in a multimillion Convention Centre which critics thought would turn into a white elephant. It did not. Rwanda’s miraculous turnaround of the economy after the genocide against the Tutsi, is about taking bold and hard decisions that are not easy for narrow minded mortals to understand.

Millar likes to emphasize that Rwanda is one of the 20 poorest countries in the world.

Well, he also needs to understand that that is the very reason why Rwanda has to think out of the box so as to come out of the poverty trap. Poverty does not mean that the thinking capacity of Rwanda’s leadership is poor. Rwanda’s leadership thinks big. The Arsenal or Paris Saint-Germain deals are well thought investments that are paying returns.

The issue should not be about the amount of money invested but about the amount of returns.  

Reading Millar’s article, one discovers that he actually knows very well the successes of the Rwanda-Arsenal deal, but tries hard to hide the truth. In his own words, he noted, “Since striking the initial agreement in 2018, Arsenal have visited the East African country on a number of occasions, with former defender David Luiz filming promotional content the following year. Luiz posed for photos with the nation’s mountain gorillas before taking time to visit president Kagame with personalized Gunners shirts.

The Brazilian said: “I’m going to recommend all my friends to spend their holidays in Rwanda.”

The Arsenal stars definitely spend big while in Rwanda. Mixing a supposedly sports news article with political statements about the arrest of terrorism convict Paul Rusesabagina, alleged human rights issues, and how long President Kagame has been in power simply shows that the author was interested in settling political scores with Rwanda, using a wrong card.

Stating that Rusesabagina was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States, by President George W. Bush in 2005, is inconsequential to the case and charges he was convicted for – founding and bankrolling a terror organization that killed people in Rwanda. If it is an issue of being famous, Osama Bin Laden was more famous as a billionaire. How did he end up?

Bin Laden was summarily executed for being the leader of Al-Qaida. Rusesabagina was tried before courts of law. Compare the rule of law applied and human rights for both scenarios.  

It is Rwandan people who decide how long president Kagame should stay in power. If Rwandans still need him to stay, why should foreigners be more concerned?  

Ironically, people like Millar, never question why the Queen of England has been on the throne since February 6, 1952 until today, or why the former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was in office for 16 years.

It has not gone down well with Rwanda haters that Rwanda will host the Commonwealth Summit. People like Millar will keep on recycling all sorts of allegations in Western media, meant to tarnish the image of President Kagame and the government of Rwanda in general.

What Rwanda's detractors do not know is that the more they try to mudsling Kagame and the Rwandan government, the more Rwandans realize that they have a great leader who has achieved a lot for the country.

Rwanda came out of the ashes and lived on because of the visionary leadership and resilience of its people. It is only those who do nothing that are not criticized. Millar and others like him should know that Rwanda is well and will keep on getting better and better.

They should stay in their lane and let Rwandans rebuild their country the way they want.