This lecture examines Rwanda’s paradoxical trajectory since Paul Kagame became President in 2000. While the country has attracted regular criticism for its crackdown on dissent at home and abroad and its involvement in conflict in the wider Great Lakes region, it has experienced a remarkable recovery since the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. This includes the peaceful return of hundreds of thousands of convicted genocide perpetrators to the same communities where they committed crimes in 1994. Meanwhile, Rwanda has built one of Africa’s most expansive social welfare systems, with heavy investment in healthcare and education. These policies have helped increase Rwandans’ average life expectancy from 47 to 69 years under Kagame’s presidency. How has a state often depicted as authoritarian, led by a President commonly described as a dictator, achieved these substantial social and economic gains? What does this mean for Rwanda’s long term social equilibrium? And how does the Rwandan case illuminate wider debates about democracy and authoritarianism in the 21st century? This lecture will tackle these pressing questions, drawing on the speaker’s more than 20 years of conducting field research in Rwanda.

About Prof. Clark -
Phil Clark is a Professor of International Politics at SOAS University of London. His research and teaching focus on conflict and post-conflict issues in Africa, with a particular interest in justice, reconciliation, peacebuilding and welfare in the Great Lakes region.

His most recent books are “Distant Justice: The Impact of the International Criminal Court on African Politics” (Cambridge University Press, 2018) – shortlisted for the Raphael Lemkin Award for best book on genocide and mass violence – and “The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Justice without Lawyers” (CUP, 2010). He is currently completing a book on welfare, post-genocide inequality and reconciliation in Rwanda, to be published by Hurst and Co. Publishers and Oxford University Press in 2025.

His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Dissent, the East African, Prospect, the Times Higher Education Supplement, The Australian and the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera websites. He is a regular radio and TV contributor on the BBC, France 24, Al Jazeera, CNN, Deutsche Welle, TNT and Monocle 24.

Professor Clark is a member of the United Nations expert group on reconciliation and the Law and Peace Practice Group of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT). He holds a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.