This chapter describes how dependence on coffee and other primary commodities exacerbated foreign dependency, especially during fluctuations in global primary commodity prices. The chapter discusses the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (RPF) origins, including the key paradigmatic ideological foundations of the party while discussing the civil war and the 1994 genocide. The chapter ends by outlining three periods of the evolution of political settlement under RPF rule. Between 1994 and 2000, RPF loyalists were rewarded, while there was increased concentration of power among Tutsi RPF members. In the 2000s, until the early 2010s, RPF leadership centralised control among a smaller clique within the RPF, with increasing elite fragmentation characterising this period. In the third phase after the early 2010s, there has been increased external reliance, and the visible threat of transnational coalitions, comprising RPF dissidents and disenchanted domestic elites, has emerged but been contained.

This concluding chapter reiterates the main contributions of the book. Growth in most African countries has been characterised by a transformation from low-value agriculture to low-value services. As a result, structural transformation has remained largely elusive within Africa. Services has been the fastest-growing sector on the continent. Rwanda is unique among rapidly growing African countries in explicitly focusing on becoming a services hub. Using the case of Rwanda, this book shows that contemporary late development, which is more dependent on services, results in more transnational forms of dependence and political contestation than experienced in prior experiences of late development. The book ends with thoughts about the future of Rwanda. It argues that in the immediate short term, any instability will depend on what happens in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the long term, Rwanda’s political stability depends not on the government’s capacity to contain domestic popular mobilisation alone but on the capacity of transnational coalitions of dissident elites and external actors capitalising on existing horizontal inequalities to challenge the Rwandan Patriotic Front rule.

This chapter looks at how other ICTR actors influenced the way in which the archive was contested. It begins by returning to the themes set out at the end of Chapter 2 and explores how the legal actors of the court initially pursued an expansive approach to the trials in search of truth, justice and reconciliation. However, this approach to prosecutions changed over time as the tribunal began to focus simply on getting as many verdicts as possible, as quickly as possible. As such, the conception of justice underpinning the archive became far more restricted and more closely resembled a more traditional form of retributive justice. This, then, shows the fragmenting of the tribunal’s initial purpose. This chapter identifies three main factors behind this shift: the solidification of the legal rules that underpinned the trials; the relationship between the tribunal and other UN organs – and particularly the Security Council’s decision in early 2000s that the tribunal had to close down as quickly as possible; and the ICTR’s acquiescence to the RPF’s demands that the tribunal halt investigations into RPF crimes during the genocide.