Kigali

Kigali generates 41% of Rwanda's GDP from a city that was a genocide site thirty years ago. In 1994, approximately 800,000 people were killed across Rwanda in 100 days. The capital has since grown to 1.75 million and produces GDP growth averaging 7-8% annually, with ICT emerging as the second-largest contributor to national output — growing 19% in a single quarter.

The 'Singapore of Africa' comparison is deliberate: President Kagame explicitly models his governance on Lee Kuan Yew. The results map onto the template. Rwanda ranks among the least corrupt countries in continental Africa. The World Bank's ease-of-doing-business index places it above Switzerland and Japan. A $300 million Kigali Innovation City project targets 50,000 tech jobs. The country has achieved 95% 4G coverage — higher than most European nations.

Kigali ranks above Switzerland on the World Bank's ease-of-doing-business index — thirty years after 800,000 people were killed across Rwanda in 100 days.

The model's vulnerability is the model itself. Kagame won re-election with 98.8% of the vote. Press freedom is suppressed. Political opposition is eliminated or exiled. The constitution was amended to extend his term through 2035. Every institution runs through a single decision-maker, creating the efficiency that investors celebrate and the fragility that political scientists warn about.

This is the honeybee pattern: a colony rebuilt from near-destruction through total coordination under a single authority. The queen's pheromones organise the hive. Every worker performs its role. The colony's output is extraordinary relative to its size. But remove the queen without a tested succession mechanism and the colony enters crisis — not because the workers are incompetent, but because the organisational architecture assumes one central signal.

Kigali's deeper challenge is geographic. Singapore sits on a global shipping lane; Rwanda is landlocked with no natural trade advantages. Every percentage point of growth requires active niche construction — building the ICT ecosystem, the conference infrastructure, the ease-of-business ranking — against the gravitational pull of geography. This growth demands continuous political will, not self-sustaining network effects.

The bet is that thirty years of authoritarian development will build institutions strong enough to survive the transition to whatever comes after Kagame. The evidence from similar experiments — Singapore excepted — is not encouraging.