Sports
PSG deal a big win for Rwanda
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.