Paul Kagame
President of Rwanda since 2000 (born 1957)
Paul Kagame (born 23 October 1957) is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who has been the president of Rwanda since 2000. He was previously considered Rwanda's de facto leader between 1994 and 2000, while Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu, until assuming the Presidency in 2000. He was previously a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel armed force which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF was one of the main belligerents of the Rwandan Civil War and was the armed force which ended the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Born to a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda that fled to Uganda when he was two years old, Kagame spent the rest of his childhood there during the Rwandan Revolution, which ended Tutsi political dominance. In the 1980s, Kagame fought in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army becoming a senior Ugandan army officer after many military victories led Museveni to the Ugandan presidency. Kagame joined the RPF, taking control of the group when previous leader Fred Rwigyema died on the second day of the 1990 invasion. By 1993, the RPF controlled significant territory in Rwanda and a ceasefire was negotiated. The assassination of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana set off the genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Kagame resumed the civil war and ended the genocide with a military victory.
The public source identifies “Paul Kagame” as president of Rwanda since 2000 (born 1957). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Paul, Kagame and President.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1231345. VIAF identifies the subject as 85669799. The Library of Congress control number is nr97006324. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 2000, 1994 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Kagame” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.