PSG deal a big win for Rwanda

Author: Samson Kasujja

• 2023-05-23 05:44:00

French football club, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), and the government of Rwanda through its Visit Rwanda brand renewed and extended their partnership until 2025; following a successful three year partnership.

The agreement will continue Visit Rwanda’s partnership with the club with the goal of showcasing the east African country as a top tourism and investment destination on the continent, developing cultural, creative synergies, and promoting Rwandan coffee and tea.

Rwanda is home to mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park and the Big 5 – buffaloes, rhinos, elephants,  leopards and lions – in Akagera National Park. The country is striving to become a global tourism hotspot and efforts to promote it as a tour destination have allowed it to regain the appeal it enjoyed in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, and to build on that momentum in 2023.

In 2022, Rwanda received more than a million visitors, bringing in half a billion dollars in tourism revenues. The country is looking to cash in up to $800 million by 2025.

The PSG and Visit Rwanda initial deal in 2019 followed the latter’s partnership with English Premier League club, Arsenal FC,  signed in 2018.

The partnerships generated over $160 million 2022 in media value. This helped in generating $445 million in tourism revenues. The revenue represented 90 per cent recovery to pre-pandemic levels, as compared to a global average of 65 per cent recovery, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Since the beginning of the partnerships, the big ‘Visit Rwanda’ logo is hard to miss at the Parc des Princes and Emirates stadiums on match days. It also appears on men’s teams’ training and warm-up kits.

On top of that, clubs’ fans are enjoying Rwandan tea and coffee, served exclusively at the stadiums.

The PSG Academy Rwanda opened its doors in Huye district in 2020, offering 100 per cent PSG training sessions to more than 100 children, some of them beneficiaries of the club’s Foundation. In 2022, the academy won the PSG Academy World Cup in the boys’ U-13 category where Rwanda was taking part in the annual competition for the first time.

Coaches from Arsenal are working with Rwandan coaches to support development of the country’s football program. Recently, a five-day ‘coach-the-coaches’ football clinic was led by Arsenal coaches such as Simon McManus and Kerry Green. During the clinic, 50 coaches from Rwanda were trained.

The partnerships are innovative ways of investment in developing the country. Rwandans are banking on sports playing a positive role in their ambitious development plans.

“No longer just consumers of sports, Rwandans are engaging with the business of sport with the ‘Visit Rwanda’ brand. The partnership with Arsenal FC and Paris Saint-Germain allows us, each week, to promote Rwanda and particularly our tourism industry to billions of fans. Visit Rwanda’s partnership with the NBA Africa brought us the first edition of the Basketball Africa League, a success despite taking place in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Clare Akamanzi, the CEO of Rwanda Development Board wrote in March.

Paris Saint-Germain players such as Sergio Ramos, Keylor Navas, Julian Draxler and Thilo Kehrer and legendary former players of the calibre of Youri Djorkaeff, Rai, Ludovic Giuly and Juan Pablo Sorin visited Rwanda as a result of Visit Rwanda deal. Male and female footballers of Arsenal FC also visited Rwanda. They include Scottish star defender Jen Beattie, Australian forward Caitlin Foord, Irish winger Katie McCabe, and English midfielder Jordan Nobbs in December 2022, and previously David Luiz, a former center-back for the club, and Eduardo César Daud Gaspar (Edu), the sporting director of the club.

By increasing the number of annual visitors hence growing tourism revenues, Rwanda is winning through these partnerships with the European football clubs.

In March, President Paul Kagame revealed that Rwanda would sign another deal with a third team in the European champions league.