The ongoing, unending tug-of-war between the United Kingdom’s major political parties over the deal to send illegal immigrants in the UK to Rwanda (for their cases to be processed there) has garnered world attention. Much ink has been expended on it by those opposed to the deal – most notably the Labor Party establishment in the UK – and that have been fighting it tooth and nail from the start. Among other things, they have painted a fictitious image of Rwanda as some horrific place where asylum seekers will be unsafe. There even are insinuations that asylum seekers deported to Rwanda will “suffer human rights abuses” – which raises the rather obvious question: assuming that was true, would it gain the country? But never mind, there always are people that will believe absolutely anything. On the other hand, a number of other states in Europe with an immigration problem of their own reportedly are looking at “the Rwanda model” as an attractive, even practical solution to this issue that has no easy answers. They are attracted to it for its potential as one of the most practical approaches at solving a problem that’s threatening to get out of hand. They know all the vilification of Rwanda in sections of the UK media are driven purely by partisan politics. These basically are the dominant storylines to the issue. But there is another aspect to the story, one that not many seem to be mentioning, but that is quite remarkable (to me as an African anyway). An African country is at the center of an important global event, but for once as a major actor rather than as a passive, even helpless recipient of the actions of others. The images that are most associated with Africa; the ones that everyone is used to whenever Africa is in the international news, most often will have to do with very bad events. Either it is conflict and mass slaughter somewhere in sub-Sahara, with multitudes of refugees fleeing across borders. Or it is coups (usually with an invisible overseas actor pulling the strings). Or it is ragged African immigrants – fleeing conflict of poverty – in overcrowded rubber dinghies drowning in the Mediterranean, the luckier ones washing up half dead on the shores of Europe, like so much debris. Pathetic, pitiable images like those are what most people of the world expect of Africa, nothing more, nothing less. Doing something to break negative cycles like these is what’s at the core of Rwanda’s immigration partnership with Britain. We are a country that just three decades ago was known for the worst reasons of all, and now the Rwandan government wants to upend the negative, degrading narratives that afflict our region. The agreement that Rwanda has worked on with the UK, if it succeeds, could provide the blueprint on how to end – or at least steeply curtail – the most dangerous illegal immigration trends on the globe. It does so by hitting the problem at the roots: the business model of people smugglers, or human trafficking gangs that control the illegal immigration routes. In Africa, the notorious gangs profit from the desperation of immigrants that seek perceived greener pastures in Europe, and that will do anything, including handing every last bit of money they have, to be loaded onto suffocating vehicles some of which start their journey in the Sahel, to embarkation points in North Africa via the deadly Sahara. A lot of the would-be immigrants don’t make it across, and the ones news media show in the Mediterranean most likely will be survivors of the Sahara crossing. This kind of thing is unacceptable to a country like Rwanda whose leadership desires, and expends a lot of effort, to achieve a more dignified Africa. The tragedies of illegal immigration – at least that involving Africans – being unacceptable as they are, couldn’t stop themselves. Hence, despite what all the cynics claim, Rwanda entered the agreement with United Kingdom (with both governments coming up with the Migration and Economic Development Partnership), despite the headaches they knew were coming. Kigali went ahead with the government of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to craft a deal whereby immigrants stuck in the UK would be flown to Rwanda, housed (in dignified conditions), and their cases processed from there. The idea was that if the plan succeeded, and other countries copied it across Europe – probably involving other partner states in Africa beside Rwanda – people traffickers would be out of business. No immigrant would pay them another coin if there was no guarantee that, even if they somehow defied death and got to Europe, they would stay there. But, inevitably, some people or groups in the West began using this potential deterrent effect to level claims such as, “you see, they are sending asylum seekers to Rwanda because it is a hellhole!” They have then endlessly tarnished Rwanda with smears and outright lies, like the claim that “Rwanda deports asylum seekers back to the countries they fled”. In fact, a lot of refugees that qualify as asylum seekers have been resettled from Rwanda to places like the US, Canada, Australia, and countries in Europe, even the International Organization for Migration says so. In the end, whatever the outcome for the deal – which still faces a number of hurdles in the UK – Rwanda will have demonstrated one thing. There are many ways we can be masters of our own destiny.
