Peace and Business on Menu for Kagame and Macron at Elysee Amid Global Flux
On 7 May 2025, Rwandan President Paul Kagame met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. The two leaders discussed bilateral cooperation in the context of a challenging global environment undergoing unprecedented changes.
This visit comes right after Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) inked a Declaration of Principles as part of a peace process brokered by the US Department of State. If all goes according to plan, a Peace Agreement is expected to be ready by June 2025.
In the past few years, the two leaders met several times either bilaterally or on the sidelines of international conferences. The last meeting was in October 2024 on the sidelines of the Francophonie Summit in Villers-Cotterets. Thanks to intense diplomatic courting, bilateral ties appear at an all-time high after being frozen for many years due to the French involvement in the Rwanda civil war.
The EU, including France, was mulling sanctions on Rwanda for its role in ‘blood minerals’. As a matter of fact, France suspended new financing by AFD in protest of Rwanda’s support to rebel groups AFC/M23 in eastern DRC. France, along with the US, Qatar and Togo, plan to form a committee to oversee the implementation of the proposed Peace Agreement.
It is worth noting that Rwanda is currently one of the official sponsors of the legendary Paris Saint Germain football team. The deal aims to increase the visibility of Rwanda on the world stage and encourage people to ‘visit Rwanda’. The sponsorship deal kicked off in 2019 and will go into extra time until 2028.
Togo is involved as its President Faure Gnassingbe has been designated by the African Union to take the lead in facilitating the peace process. Previously, peace talks between Rwanda and DRC were undertaken under the EAC-SADC. Now, the peace talks have been escalated at the African Union level.
In June 2025, both Rwandan President Paul Kagame and DRC President Felix Tshisekedi are expected to travel to Washington in order to sign the Peace Agreement under the watchful eyes of US President Donald Trump.
At the same time, both Rwanda and DRC are expected to conclude business deals with the US. The White House has indicated that it is interested in the #CriticalMinerals in the Great Lakes region. The EU is likely to seek to strike a similar deal in order to diversify its source for these same minerals that are essential the #EnergyTransition.
The eastern region of Kivu in DRC is rich in gold and 3T, namely, tin, tungsten and tantalum, with the latter occurring naturally in the form of the #coltan mineral. In addition, the Kantanga region in southeast DRC is world renowned for copper and cobalt.
It is worth recalling that the US and EU are promoting investment along the #LobitoCorridor under their flagship geo-economic initiatives of #PG2I and #GGI respectively. The vital corridor linking DRC with Angola aims to secure access to these Critical Minerals and to contribute to the socio-economic development of the region.