In July 2010, while on a presidential campaign trail in Rulindo District, President Paul Kagame illustrated the achievements of the past and the possibilities of the future, and asked Rwandans, “Why change a winning team?” He committed to serving Rwandans and offering them a much better lifestyle and development.

He never disappointed. Rwanda has witnessed tremendous progress since then. Eight years later, in July 2018, a year after the 2017 elections, Kagame said, “We have left the emergency situation behind us. We are no longer trying to survive, we are living. We want to sustain that, keep that as a minimum but also go beyond”.

One needs to look back to where Rwanda was back when Kagame came into office and where Rwanda is today in terms of realistic numbers.

When the Rwanda Patriotic Front/ Army (RPF/A), led by Kagame stopped the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and liberated Rwanda, the country had been torn apart. It was a total failed state, and no one imagined it ever resurrecting. There was no way to rebuild it. There was not even the human resource, to start with, no money, and no infrastructure.

Even the most optimistic analysts doubted Rwanda’s chances.

However, 30 years later, the country is stable, prosperous, unified, and, in large part, reconciled. Social services, such as education, healthcare, housing, and others, are provided to the needy, with no distinction of ethnicity or region of origin – two forms of discrimination that characterized the governments leading up to the genocide against the Tutsi, the new government brought to an end.

To qualify Kagame’s statement that Rwandans are no longer surviving but living, one has to put one fact into consideration: the health of a population contributes immensely to any country’s economic growth and productivity.

Rwanda made great strides in improving the health status of the population through investment in health facilities and personnel and made provision for health insurance. Mortality estimates show a substantial decline at all levels. The crude death rate, which gives a picture of general mortality, declined from eight deaths per 1,000 population in 2012 to 6.3 in 2022.

Generally, there has been a decline of 63 per cent in overall deaths. The low level of crude death rate is indicative of a youthful age structure of the country. The results also show that there has been a downward trend in childhood deaths.

Infant mortality rate has declined from 49 deaths per 1,000 live births to 28.9 in the decade 2012-2022. Similarly, deaths of children aged below 5 years declined from 72 to 40.7 per 1,000 live births in the same period. This is indicative of the health policies and programmes the government put in place.

The decline in infant mortality rate led to substantial increases in life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy at birth depicts the average number of years a newborn is expected to live if subjected to mortality schedules prevailing in the country at the time.

In the 2002 population census, life expectancy was at 64.5 years and has since increased substantially over the decade 2002-2022. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 69.6 in 2022.

Beyond the people, as some Westerners were proposing to cut Rwanda into pieces and erase a nation, they never thought of what Rwanda would become today. Today, Rwanda is one of Africa's fastest-growing economies and a model for sustainable growth and resilience.

According to the United Nations’ World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024, Rwanda’s economy is projected to grow to  7 per cent in 2024, ranking first in East Africa and third among African countries with high economic growth prospects. To put this into context, right after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Rwanda’s GDP per capita was around $111. It multiplied to $540 in 2010 and currently stands at $1,064.

Trade has equally been booming. Rwanda jumped over 100 places in the World Bank Doing Business Index, today ranking 38th globally and second in Africa. The value of investments registered more than tripled from US$400 million in 2010 to nearly US$3 billion in 2024.

Rwanda is becoming a global gateway for meetings, incentives, conferences, and events (MICE). Figures show that in 2023, the sector generated over US$95 million in revenues, with over 160 events hosted and an estimated 65,000 delegates. This represents a 48% increase compared to the 2022 performance.

Now, Rwanda is looking to become an African hub for all disciplines, from sports to health to technology and so on.

The developments are an indication that when the team in the field is winning, you do not change it. And that is why Rwandans have insisted on keeping Kagame in power. His results speak for him.