Rwanda at 32: A Booming Economy, a New Airport, and a Restless Generation

Thirty-two years after the genocide that tore it apart, Rwanda presents one of Africa's most striking stories of reconstruction — and one of its most debated. The economy has expanded by an average of roughly 7 percent a year over the past decade, driven by tourism, technology, mining and agribusiness, transforming a country once synonymous with catastrophe into a byword for order and ambition.

The physical evidence of that transformation is everywhere. Investment in infrastructure and technology has reshaped Kigali and beyond, and a new international airport under construction about 40 kilometres outside the capital has created thousands of jobs while symbolising the government's grander vision: transforming Rwanda into a high-income country by 2050.

President Paul Kagame, in power since 2000, has cast the recovery as more than rebuilding — his government frames it as a long-term national project centred on unity, economic transformation and the legacy of what it calls the liberation struggle. Officials increasingly describe Liberation Day itself as an ongoing project rather than a commemoration of a finished past.

Yet the anniversary is also a moment for honest ledger-keeping. Creating enough work for young people remains one of the government's toughest challenges, with youth unemployment standing at about 14 percent according to the latest government survey — a sobering figure in a country where the median age is low and expectations, raised by decades of growth, are high. Young Rwandans reflecting on the anniversary speak of progress and pain in the same breath.

And the model has its critics. Rights groups have long pointed to restrictions on political opposition, freedom of expression and civic space as the unacknowledged cost of Rwanda's order. Thirty-two years on, the country's achievement is real and remarkable — and so are the questions about what kind of society all that growth is building.