As PSG prepares to compete in the Champions League final, its flocked “Visit Rwanda” jersey crystallizes much more than sponsorship: it embodies the assumed irruption of African soft power on the world stage. An outreach strategy that shakes up dominant narratives – and which, in this time of the spotlight, must be welcomed. Sports diplomacy is gradually establishing itself as a lever of influence on the African continent. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is preparing to conclude an agreement with AS Monaco to promote its tourist image under the slogan Experience DRC, a partnership estimated at 4.8 million euros, supported by the Minister of Sports. Côte d'Ivoire, for its part, has established a lasting partnership with Olympique de Marseille around the Sublime Côte d'Ivoire program, launched in 2023 and extended until 2030, with the creation of a training center for young people in Abidjan. In these two cases, the use of sport is not limited to the flocking of jerseys: it is part of a strategy of influence, projection and concrete opportunities. Why then such fierceness against Visit Rwanda? Affixed to the jerseys of Arsenal, PSG, Bayern Munich and more recently Atlético de Madrid, this tourism promotion program has become the target of petitions, demonstrations and political positions in France, on the grounds of the role attributed to Rwanda in the crisis in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. No one is minimizing the seriousness of the situation in Kivu, nor the need for commensurate diplomatic engagement. But should we nevertheless condemn outright an economic strategy pursued for years, under the pretext that it is disturbing? Reducing these policies to “sportswashing” means refusing to evaluate them for what they are: tools of development, image, and sometimes emancipation. A question of economic development The example of Visit Rwanda illustrates this perfectly. This campaign was launched in 2018, well before the resurgence of tensions in eastern DRC. Above all, it constitutes the external promotion arm of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a public agency responsible since 2009 for managing key sectors of the Rwandan economy. Alongside partnerships with European football, the RDB has committed the country to a strategy of global attractiveness: sponsor and host of the Basketball Africa League, organization of the Tour of Rwanda, hosting of the World Cycling Championship in 2025, ambitions of a Formula 1 Grand Prix. What exactly are we condemning? The idea that an African country can, like so many others, build its development through tourism and sport? Behind this campaign are not slogans, but jobs, income, lives. Guides, hoteliers, cooks, drivers, waiters, airport agents and so many other professions...: there are hundreds of thousands of them who make a living from a sector that has become, in ten years, one of the economic engines of the country. However, these are the reflexes of neocolonialism: that which always intends to judge what would be suitable or not for African countries. Rwanda's tourism ambition is therefore an opportunistic display? Would it not rather be the general mobilization of a people who, thirty years after the genocide of the Tutsis, continue to rebuild themselves through cohesion, openness and work? Because tourism today represents nearly 10% of Rwanda's GDP, or more than 600 million dollars per year, providing employment for more than 200,000 people. In 2023, business tourism alone generated $95 million, a colossal sum for an emerging economy. Construction of infrastructure, deployment of services, preservation of crafts, development and maintenance of natural heritage. All sections of society support and embody Visit Rwanda. Collective stories By partnering with some of the most exposed football clubs in the world, Kigali uses a universal language, capable of telling a story, arousing curiosity, and establishing a country in global imaginations. The partnership with Arsenal, which tripled the number of British tourists, demonstrates the concrete benefits. Since the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), the European Union has recognized sport as having a social and identity function. In 2020, the United Nations report, entitled Sport, a catalyst for peace and sustainable development for all on a global scale, emphasizes its structuring effect in emerging countries, in terms of empowerment, social peace and local investment. It is an approach equal to that of other nations: Qatar with the World Cup in 2022, Ivory Coast with the African Cup of Nations in 2023, or even France with the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024. As such, Rwanda is only following a widely proven method. Sport has long accompanied moments of change. It gives shape to collective stories, creates points of contact where political speech fails. Jesse Owens defying racial doctrines in Berlin in 1936, Mohamed Ali denouncing the war in Vietnam in 1966, Nelson Mandela uniting a post-apartheid nation around rugby in 1995: all of them embodied, in their own way, this capacity of sport to broaden the field of possibility. In a more contemporary register, the partnership between Rwanda and PSG has made it possible to train several hundred young people alongside their idols, and offered the Rwandan U13 team a victory in the Academy World Cup in 2022. A simple way of showing that these commitments train, open doors, and change lives. The debate is legitimate. But he cannot condemn the effort of a country which seeks to write a new chapter in its history. Sport, because it touches on emotion, imagination and hope, is a fantastic vector of projection. Visit Rwanda is not a slogan. It is an assumed strategy, with its results, its limits, but also its potential. What deserves criticism is what is done - or not done - on the ground. Not the fact that a country chooses, like so many others, to make itself heard in a world that rarely looks at Africa other than through its crises.
