... has been President of Rwanda since the year 2000. He'd been two years old when his Tutsi family fled to Uganda in 1960, as Belgian administration in Rwanda came to an end, when the Rwandan Revolution ended centuries of Tutsi dominance over the Hutsi majority. After serving under the Ugandan rebel leader Yoweri Museveni, first in the latter's rebel army and then in the national army after Museveni became President, he joined the Uganda–based Rwandan Patriotic Front, which invaded Rwanda in 1990. He became leader of the RPF later that same year after the shooting of its founder, Fred Rwigema.
In 1994, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu who had been President of Rwanda since 1973, died when his aircraft was brought down by a rocket attack. Kagame was later blamed by a French judge for carrying out the attack, but he claimed that it was the work of Hutu extremists, as a pretext for their planned extermination of the Tutsi minority. The incident ignited tensions in the region, and the Rwandan genocide began within hours. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus are estimated to have died between April and July 1994.
As the genocide proceeded, the RPF renewed its assault on governmnent forces, and in July 1994 it captured the Rwandan capital, Kigali – causing an estimated two million Hutus (many of whom have since been implicated in the genocide) to flee to Zaire. Kagame was appointed as Vice–President, in a multi–ethnic government established by his fellow RPF member Pasteur Bizimungu, controlling the army and maintaining law and order. He became President in 2000, after Bizimungu resigned in a dispute over the make–up of a new cabinet.
Although the killing in Rwanda was over, the presence of Hutu militias in DR Congo (formerly Zaire) has led to years of conflict there, causing up to five million deaths. Kagame's government has twice invaded its much larger neighbour, saying it wants to wipe out the Hutu forces. And a Congolese Tutsi rebel group remains active – refusing to lay down its arms, saying that to do so would put its community at risk of genocide. The world's largest peacekeeping force has been unable to end the fighting.
Sources: Wikipedia and BBC News.
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