You don’t have to go far on a social platform to see a video of how nice life seems in Rwanda. Its capital, Kigali, has hosted a carousel of global sporting events. It wants to host the Formula One. These narratives crowd out the other side of Paul Kagame’s country – a nation involved in a war in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, so bad that sanctions are in place. And that’s the point: Rwanda puts a lot of work into its soft power.
This is an open secret with few details, but this week The Continent has the receipts for an $85,000 influence campaign. In our three-part cover package we also look at how a crackdown on journalists has opened up the space for these campaigns inside Rwanda, and how they’re aimed at decision makers in Brussels and New York. In the Great Lakes, it’s a battle over which version of the war the world believes – or even gets to see.
Click here to read the package in full.
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