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How the NBA got into business with an African dictator
How the NBA got into business with an African dictator (1:21)
How the NBA got into business with an African dictator (1:21)
Mark Fainaru-Wada, ESPN Staff WriterJul 26, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
KIGALI, Rwanda -- In the summer of 2018, inside a national arena that felt more like a small-college gym, the NBA commissioner shot free throws with the president of Rwanda.
It was a meeting of disparate men with complementary motives.
Adam Silver, a lawyer and NBA lifer who grew up in a wealthy New York suburb before presiding over one of the most progressive leagues in sports, was in Rwanda to build on a mission to extend the NBA's reach to every corner of the world.
Paul Kagame, a former rebel general credited with stopping one of the worst atrocities in modern history but who for years had been assailed as a dictator who smothers opposition through arrests, disappearances and killings, was looking to forge a partnership that would boost Rwanda's economy and, critics say, distract the world from his human rights record.
"I'd like to host an NBA game here someday," Kagame mused, describing to Silver his ideas for renovating Rwanda's Petit Stade, the "Little Stadium." Silver's deputy, Mark Tatum, was there, too, as was Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri, who counted Kagame as a "dear friend."
Just days earlier, Silver had signaled the NBA's plan for a new league in Africa, although he noted there weren't yet enough sufficient arenas on the continent. As Silver and his colleagues looked around Petit Stade, they told Kagame a mere upgrade wouldn't do.
Rwanda, one of the world's poorest countries, needed an NBA-style arena with at least 10,000 seats and all the extras: suites, high-speed Wi-Fi, plush locker rooms, concessions and so on. And they described to Kagame a way to pay off the project: create the kinds of vibrant retail and housing developments now common around U.S. sports venues.
"You could see that his eyes lit up," Tatum remembers.
Within minutes, several members of Kagame's cabinet appeared at Petit Stade, including a minister who carried renovation plans for the arena. Kagame turned to the minister and told him, "OK, you're going to the United States. We're doing something different than this."
Just one year later, as only a leader with total control of his country can do, Kagame christened a $104 million arena down the road from Petit Stade. The project was central to launching the now 4-year-old Basketball Africa League, and it cemented a dissonant international partnership that requires Silver and his league to look past injustices far worse than those they actively oppose at home, while helping Kagame burnish his image around the world.
ESPN examined the partnership for more than a year, interviewing NBA executives and coaches, Rwandan officials and opposition figures, U.S. government sources, human rights experts and investors in the NBA's Africa business -- valued at nearly $1 billion as of 2021. ESPN also reviewed U.S. and international human rights reports and traveled twice to Rwanda.
Kagame initially agreed through a spokesperson to be interviewed but ultimately declined.
The examination reveals the tensions navigated by the NBA and other sports organizations that align with authoritarian governments such as Kagame's: The leagues find a streamlined path to global expansion, but one littered with ongoing human rights abuses -- and the risks of appearing to help obscure them.
The U.S. State Department repeatedly has cited credible reports that Kagame's government is responsible for human rights violations ranging from the imprisonment, torture and murder of political opponents to the funding of child soldiers in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kagame consistently deflects and denies the allegations.
"He is, and has been for decades, a Putin-style dictator," Elizabeth Shackelford, a former U.S. diplomat who spent more than a decade in Africa, tells ESPN. "I'd like for the NBA to explain to us why it's OK partnering with someone who individually created this kind of suffering, both in his country and beyond."
The NBA says its focus in partnering with Kagame is simple. "The conversations that we've had with Paul Kagame have all been about improving the lives of Rwandan people," Tatum says. "How can we create, how can we inspire and connect people through the game of basketball to make Rwandan peoples' lives better."
THE HOUSE IS PACKED at BK Arena. It has the feel of a big NCAA game. Many of the fans supporting one of the local teams, REG, sponsored by the government-owned electricity company, have painted their faces in the team's red and white, and others beat on drums and blow vuvuzelas. Cheerleaders energize the crowd, which erupts in wild ovation when Kagame enters the building. He walks alongside the court before being directed up an aisle to a VIP section, where he sits with Tatum on one side of him and his minister of sports on the other. BK Arena, sponsored by a partially state-owned bank, resembles a mini-NBA facility, with eight VIP suites, six locker rooms, media facilities, a doping-control room and high-speed internet throughout the building. It can host everything from sporting events and concerts to executive retreats.
Outside the arena, Kagame's government has turned Kigali into an outlier among major world cities, striking as much for what is absent: There's no garbage blowing across the streets, no stray dogs, no plastic bottles bouncing around. In 2008, Rwanda became one of the first countries to ban single-use plastic bags and bottles. There are no homeless encampments and no panhandlers. Crime seems minimal.
The city is safe, clean and efficient, with high-end hotels and unique tourism options -- the perfect combination for a multibillion-dollar sports league's expansion plans. "The place works," Tatum says.
This is the scene the NBA had in mind for the BAL, its first pro league outside North America. With a population almost five times larger than the United States -- about 1.5 billion people, nearly 70% under the age of 30 -- Africa represents massive untapped potential for new fans and for future NBA stars.
The NBA hopes to replicate its previous success in basketball-crazed China, where today its business is valued at more than $5 billion.
Since opening a headquarters in South Africa in 2010, the league has added offices in Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and Kenya. The first NBA Store in Africa opened in 2022 in Johannesburg, with two more added since. And the league recently announced a program to fund tech startups across the continent.
The NBA launched its first training academy in Senegal in 2017 and has since expanded its player-development operation. Since the start of last season, the league has held Junior NBA programs in 13 countries on the continent. The plan seems to be working: Forty years ago, Nigeria's Hakeem Olajuwon became the NBA's first player born and raised in Africa; this season's opening-night rosters featured 15 players born in Africa and another 36 with at least one parent born there -- representing roughly 10% of all players.
All of this has been a boon to the NBA's popularity in Africa. This past season, more than 140 games were televised across the continent, with a 41% increase in viewership from the year before. Followers in Africa of the NBA's social media accounts jumped by 20%, and jersey sales in South Africa increased substantially with the opening of the new stores. Investors in NBA Africa include former President Barack Obama and Hall of Famers Grant Hill and Dikembe Mutombo.
The centerpiece of the expanding footprint is the 12-team BAL, and the linchpin to its creation has been the alliance with Kagame.
Clare Akamanzi, chief executive of the Rwanda Development Board when ESPN interviewed her in Kigali last year, calls Kagame a "get-things-done kind of leader."
"I think what has been very clear for Rwanda's story is that leadership matters," Akamanzi says. "He always has a plan."
The development board, which played a critical role in the creation of the arena, is one of the most powerful entities in Rwanda, after Kagame himself. Before Akamanzi ran it, she was Kagame's top strategist.
But several months after she spoke with ESPN, Akamanzi landed a new job: CEO of NBA Africa, the formal enterprise that oversees all NBA interests on the continent.
In announcing Akamanzi's hiring, Tatum called her "the ideal executive to lead our business in Africa."
Well before hiring one of Kagame's top advisers, the NBA had begun to embrace the president at major events in North America. Kagame attended All-Star Games in Toronto, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina; a Warriors playoff game in Oakland, California; and various NBA-sponsored events. He answered questions from CNN's John King at an NBA board of governors meeting, and he and Silver embraced at an NBA Africa forum held in 2019, when Kagame was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
By aligning himself with the NBA and hobnobbing at league events, Kagame is trying to channel "Obama's cool," says Mohamed Keita, the Human Rights Foundation's senior Africa policy adviser.
"It's as if the NBA invited and partnered with a mosquito to do a campaign about health," Keita says.
VICTOIRE INGABIRE SITS on her couch in the living room of her Kigali home, legs crossed and hands in her lap. She's calmly explaining the ways in which she has become a nonperson. On the wall behind her hangs a map of Rwanda, and over her left shoulder is a painting of Christ on the cross. Over her right shoulder is a cluster of family photos: one of her three grown children, another from a wedding and a third showing two of her four grandchildren.
Ingabire's children and her husband of 35 years live in Europe, but she can't visit them. She is barred by the Kagame government from leaving Rwanda. She hasn't seen her husband in the Netherlands in nearly 15 years, and he has been, she says, "very sick" for the past several. She hasn't seen her middle child, Remy, now married with two kids and living in Sweden, since 2010. He was 15 then. Ingabire, 55, says she asked for government permission to attend his wedding in Sweden two years ago, but after receiving no response, she was left to watch the vows on her laptop.
Her two other kids have managed to see her in Kigali a few times in the past few years, but the visits are not easy. She is under constant surveillance, and her visitors are monitored, too.
Ingabire is an opposition leader in a country with very little opposition. She was banned from running against Kagame in the recent presidential election; she can't even hold a political meeting.
"It is the life for all opposition members in Rwanda," she says.
In 2010, Ingabire was living in the Netherlands and leading a political party in exile when she decided to return home and run for president against Kagame. She told her youngest son, Rist, that she'd return to the Netherlands in time for his 8th birthday. She hasn't been back since.
Ingabire was arrested before the 2010 election, then released but forbidden from campaigning. She was arrested again after Kagame's victory and ultimately was sentenced to 15 years in prison for minimizing the 1994 Rwandan genocide, inciting people to revolt and organizing armed groups against the government. She denied the allegations, and human rights organizations condemned her case as politically motivated. In 2018, Kagame pardoned Ingabire after eight years in prison. Five of those, she says, were served in solitary confinement.
Kagame has derided the media for turning Ingabire into an "angel." During a news conference in 2022, he said, "She was in prison, she committed a crime for which she was tried in the court of law, she was actually sentenced and imprisoned. ... She'd actually be in prison, if we hadn't just forgiven her."
As Ingabire meets with ESPN at her home, the BAL's 2023 playoffs are in full swing. Although she bitterly opposes Kagame's government, Ingabire says Rwanda needs to be doing business with organizations like the NBA to develop its economy. In fact, her country is host to a number of U.S.-based companies, including Marriott and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
But Ingabire says the NBA should leverage its influence by working with the U.S. government to "push the Rwanda government to open up political space and to respect the rule of law and to let the opposition work in Rwanda, as everywhere else."
When asked whether she fears what the government might do to her for continuing to speak out, Ingabire begins to methodically list a number of colleagues she says have been arrested, killed or disappeared since 2016:
There's Boniface Twagirimana, her former deputy and a father of two, arrested then disappeared while being transferred between prisons. And Anselme Mutuyimana, her 30-year-old assistant, kidnapped from a bus station, his body found the next day. And Eugene Ndereyimana, a 29-year-old father of two with another on the way, missing since 2019. And Iragena Illumine, a nurse in her early 30s and mother of four, missing since she vanished on her way to work. And Syldio Dusabumuremyi, national party coordinator and father of two, stabbed to death. And Venant Abayisenga, a 30-year-old aide, missing since he left home one day in 2020.
"If they will arrest me, they will arrest me," she says. "I will go there." She almost laughs expectantly at the thought of returning to prison.
"If they will assassinate me, I will be assassinated. But I have to go ahead with my struggle."
IN LATE AUGUST 2020, Paul Rusesabagina boarded a private plane in Dubai, believing he was headed for a speaking engagement in Burundi, a small country about the same size as Rwanda which borders it to the south. Rusesabagina had once been a heroic figure in his native Rwanda, lauded for helping save more than 1,000 potential genocide victims by sheltering them in the Kigali hotel he managed in 1994. President George W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 2005, the year after Don Cheadle made Rusesabagina famous by portraying him in the Oscar-nominated film "Hotel Rwanda."
But by 2020, Rusesabagina was a wanted man in Rwanda. He had become a leading Kagame critic in exile and, concerned for the safety of his children, had moved to the United States and settled in San Antonio. When he boarded the plane in Dubai, he had no plans to return to his homeland. But as the private jet began its descent, Rusesabagina realized he had been tricked. He was being brought to Kigali and dropped into Kagame's hands.
"I almost collapsed," Rusesabagina said in a recent interview for an investigative journalism report called "Forbidden Stories - Rwanda Classified."
Rusesabagina was arrested and accused of terrorism for his alleged support of an armed opposition group. He would later say in court that although he helped form the group to assist refugees, he didn't advocate violence and was focused on diplomacy. Human rights organizations called the arrest politically motivated and demanded his release.
Two and a half weeks after Rusesabagina was taken, San Antonio Spurs executive R.C. Buford received an email from a Rusesabagina family lawyer, asking whether the NBA might help. The lawyer had heard Kagame was a big NBA fan and wondered if Buford could explore whether "Adam Silver and [Raptors president] Masai Ujiri may feel compelled to assist" in a "deepening humanitarian issue."
About 90 minutes later, Buford responded: "President Kagame and Masai Ujuri [sic] are very close. If this is a state-led initiative, then Masai will be aligned with Kagame. He's probably not going to lobby against Kagame and Adam Silver only knows Kagame through Masai. I don't know this will be [an] effective connection."
In late April 2021, as Rusesabagina was on trial and two weeks before the BAL's inaugural season was scheduled to open, Rusesabagina's wife, Taciana, wrote an open letter to Silver, first reported in The Nation.
She called on the NBA to reconsider holding BAL games in Rwanda and added, "In doing so, we also hope you will join the calls to place pressure on the Rwandan government both to free Paul Rusesabagina, but also to dramatically improve their treatment of other dissidents and their general treatment of their own citizens."
Tatum responded, writing that he appreciated and understood Taciana's concerns, saying that the league was aware the U.S. State Department was in "close communication" with the Rwandan government, and assuring her that "we continue to monitor their engagement." Tatum explained that the NBA's mission was to use basketball to improve people's lives and that the league follows "directives and guidance" from the State Department.
In September 2021, Rusesabagina was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison for what a government spokesperson described as "the terrorist activities" of a group led by Rusesabagina. The spokesperson added, "The people of Rwanda will feel safer now justice has been delivered."
Human rights groups and Rusesabagina's family continued to press the U.S. government to get involved. Cheadle joined a public campaign calling for Rusesabagina's release and recruited his golfing buddy, Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers. Rivers, then coaching the 76ers, posted on Instagram with a picture of himself wearing a "FREE RUSESABAGINA" T-shirt and wrote that Rusesabagina was "kidnapped, given a sham trial, and is now unlawfully jailed."
Rivers also contacted the league office to see whether the NBA would take a position.
"We heard from Doc," Tatum says. "We said that it's the role of the U.S. government and the State Department to have those negotiations."
"They were in a tough spot," Rivers tells ESPN, adding that he appreciated the league giving players and coaches the freedom to speak out.
In May 2022, the U.S. State Department designated Rusesabagina "wrongfully detained," the same designation it gave WNBA star Brittney Griner after her 2022 arrest in Russia. After negotiations between the two governments, Rusesabagina was freed in March 2023. He had spent more than 30 months in prison. In "Forbidden Stories - Rwanda Classified," he said he had been tortured daily and held in solitary confinement.
He returned to San Antonio and declined an interview request from ESPN.
Ujiri, meanwhile, says he recalled some discussions about what impact it might have on the BAL if the league took a position on Rusesabagina's arrest and imprisonment.
"I don't know what ended up happening," he says. "For me, honestly, I feel these things are separate from sports. ... My focus was to get the BAL off the ground."
ABOUT A DOZEN years ago, Ujiri was in Kigali to run an NBA-sponsored basketball camp. The sport had changed and shaped his life growing up in Nigeria, and now Ujiri was working to pay it forward, teaching kids the game he loved and hoping to inspire development. At one point during the Rwanda camp, Ujiri received a special dinner invitation: President Paul Kagame wanted to meet him.
At the time, Ujiri was the general manager of the Denver Nuggets, and the Nuggets were owned by the Kroenke family, who also owned another sports franchise near and dear to Kagame.
"Kroenke owns Arsenal, and [Kagame] was very, very critical of Arsenal at the time," Ujiri says now, laughing. "You know, he's a big football, soccer fan, a big Arsenal fan, and that's how my relationship started with him."
Ujiri, who had a modest pro basketball career in Europe before turning to scouting and management, already had worked on developing the sport in Africa for years when he met Kagame. He was named director of the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program in 2003, the same year he established a nonprofit called Giants of Africa in his hometown of Zaria, Nigeria. Since then, his organization has mushroomed across 17 African countries, holding camps and building courts.
Ujiri likes to say he will measure his life's success not through NBA titles but through his efforts to help Africa. During a nearly 90-minute interview in his office at the Raptors' practice facility, Ujiri repeats several times a phrase that sounds like a mantra: "I'm selfish for the continent."
By the 2016 All-Star Game in Toronto, he knew Kagame well and invited the Rwandan president to be his guest. Kagame watched the game from a VIP suite.
At one point, Ujiri walked into the suite to find Kagame with his head in his hands.
"Excellency, is there anything wrong?" Ujiri asked.
Kagame shook his head, looked up and asked: "How much does it cost to build an arena like this?"
Three years later, and one year after Silver's visit to Kigali, Rwanda's new arena opened. It came with plans to add a sports and entertainment complex that happened to align with one of Ujiri's other business interests -- a development company focused on Africa.
In the summer of 2021, soon after the BAL hosted its first games in Kigali, Kagame signed a presidential order granting Ujiri 6 acres adjacent to the arena. The property was worth an estimated $5 million.
Ujiri's company would oversee a development project that includes an 80-room hotel, restaurants, a rooftop lounge, a gym, a podcast studio, and a multipurpose field for events and open markets -- the type of sports and entertainment complex he, Silver and Tatum discussed with Kagame in 2018.
There was nothing illegal about the grant to Ujiri, and certainly city governments across the U.S. have provided subsidies and sweetened deals worth billions to pro franchises looking to build new stadiums and training complexes.
In the interview with ESPN at his Toronto office, Ujiri initially says the land was not a grant but a lease. When informed that it was listed in government documents as an official grant from Kagame, Ujiri says, "I think the way that this works, if you go to many of these countries, these presidents can assign properties" for development.
"I actually don't care what anybody really thinks here," he says. "My focus is developing Africa, and I hope you write that. My focus is developing Africa and the growth, rather than [having] all those things that exist here [in the West] and everybody tries to stop us from having those there."
When asked whether he would personally benefit from the land grant, Ujiri says, "I don't know about benefit from it. I know Africa is going to benefit."
Ujiri earns a reported $15 million per year as vice chairman and president of the Raptors and says he's putting his own money into the Rwanda development project. "I make enough money here [in Toronto]," he says. "Trust me.
"I fear no one. I've done nothing wrong. Zero, zero, zero. In everything I've done, I've done no bad business in this world, so I can walk anywhere in the world with my head high."
Last August, Ujiri and Kagame were together for a groundbreaking ceremony for the new entertainment complex in Kigali, to be named Zaria Court, after Ujiri's hometown in Nigeria.
"I want to commend you, Your Excellency, for how people do business here," Ujiri told Kagame during the event. "It is first class. ... It's always, 'How do we solve the problem?' which is how things are supposed to be done in this world."
Ujiri tells ESPN he is in talks to create similar complexes in Nairobi, Kenya; Dakar, Senegal; Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; and Johannesburg over the next five years.
"This is a huge ecosystem we're trying to build on the continent," Ujiri says.
Ujiri also has close relationships with several other African leaders, along with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Obama, and says he has been sought out for his advice on how to deal with Kagame. Once, Ujiri says, he was approached by a U.S. State Department employee asking how the government might best deal with Rwanda's president on a difficult diplomatic issue.
"Go talk to him face-to-face," Ujiri says he advised the official. "Don't talk to him in the name of what people are writing and what people are saying."
During an event at BK Arena last year, Ujiri culminated an emotional speech by introducing Kagame as a "dear friend, a mentor, an inspiration, an incredible leader in Africa, an example, an example that this continent needs! ... I love you, President Kagame! You are a friend. You are unbelievable!"
KAGAME HAS BEEN Rwanda's president since 2000, but he has been its leader since 1994, when, as the Tutsi commander of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, he was credited with ending a genocide unleashed by Hutu militias. In a country the size of Maryland, some 800,000 people were killed. Neighbors killed neighbors. Friends killed friends. Family members killed family members. Many victims were hacked to death with machetes.
As news of the horrors spilled beyond Rwanda, the West largely failed to respond. The result, experts say, has been a dynamic that Kagame has seized on for decades.
"When you criticize Rwanda, the immediate response will be, 'Where were you in 1994?'" says Filip Reyntjens, a professor at the University of Antwerp who has written extensively about the country and has served as an expert witness on the law and politics of Rwanda at several international courts. "There's sort of an international feeling of guilt over being inactive in 1994, and this is still very much used as a credit. It's an asset in the hands of Kagame."
Bill Clinton, the U.S. president at the time of the genocide, became one of Kagame's biggest champions, praising the Rwandan president for freeing "the heart and the mind of his people." Kagame had to restart the country from scratch, and, three decades later, the literacy rate is nearly 80%, women are the majority in Parliament and more than 34% of the country has internet access. Clinton has called it the "Rwandan miracle."
Since 2000, Kagame has run for reelection four times, each time receiving more than 93% of the vote. Earlier this month, he captured 99% of votes cast. By comparison, in an election deemed a sham, Vladimir Putin was reelected Russia's president in March with 87% of the vote.
A 2015 constitutional referendum, which passed with 98% support, allowed Kagame to extend his rule beyond two terms. With his recent reelection, he could stay in power until 2034 -- putting him in control of the country for essentially 40 years.
A report from Freedom House, a nonprofit funded mostly by the U.S. State Department, said the 2017 Rwandan presidential election was "marred by political intimidation, unfair registration processes, and the blocking of challengers," among other issues. The State Department reported "irregularities" and cases of "ballot-stuffing."
In addition to election manipulation, allegations of human rights abuses have piled up as Kagame's grip on the country has tightened. Freedom House produces annual reports that define countries as "Free," "Partly Free" and "Not Free." For each of the 24 years of Kagame's presidency, Rwanda has been designated "Not Free." The organization also cites Rwanda as one of the world's most prolific perpetrators of transnational repression -- a term used to describe governments that kill, injure or intimidate across borders to stifle dissent.
Every single one of the U.S. State Department's annual human rights reports dating back to 2000, Kagame's first year as president, describes Rwanda's poor record on human rights.
The report published two months before the NBA's new Africa league tipped off in Kigali in 2021 began: "Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government; forced disappearance by the government; torture by the government; harsh and life-threatening conditions in some detention facilities; arbitrary detention; political prisoners or detainees; politically motivated reprisal against individuals located outside the country; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression, press, and the internet, including threats of violence against journalists, censorship, and website blocking; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, such as overly restrictive nongovernmental organization laws; and restrictions on political participation."
"Kagame is one of the world's leading strongmen," says Stephanie Schwartz, who previously worked on Freedom House reports on Rwanda and currently is an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "I don't know a better way to say that."
Kagame repeatedly has dismissed allegations of human rights abuses as hypocritical efforts to undermine his government.
"There are many people who have no freedoms in the democracies we are talking about, and they have nothing of that I'm being praised for," he said during a news conference last year. "So, who is worse off?"
IN MAY 2021, one week after the BAL had launched, Silver held a Zoom news conference during which he proclaimed: "We today value this new Africa entity at nearly $1 billion."
The next day, a letter addressed to the commissioner arrived at the NBA offices in New York. It was from the Human Rights Foundation, expressing "grave concern" about the league's budding relationship with Kagame.
"Given your stated values, we believe that you have the responsibility not to be in league with Kagame and his government," wrote HRF president Thor Halvorssen. He called on the NBA to "host future BAL seasons in countries not ruled by murderous warlords" and to "reevaluate the NBA's relationship with Kagame."
The HRF suggested the NBA was assisting Kagame's emerging strategy of using sports to bolster his country's economy and advance Rwanda on the world stage. The concept, though hardly new, has come to be known recently as "sportswashing;" repressive regimes are accused of aligning with sports entities to distract from their human rights abuses. Think Saudi Arabia and LIV Golf, Russia and the 2018 World Cup, Hitler and the 1936 Olympics.
Rwanda, which receives more than $1 billion in annual foreign aid, including $150 million from the U.S., pays millions of dollars per year to Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Paris St.-Germain in exchange for the soccer juggernauts' agreement to showcase the marketing slogan "Visit Rwanda" on jerseys and stadium signs.
Rwanda, nicknamed "Land of a Thousand Hills" for its rolling beauty, will in 2025 become the first African country to host the world road cycling championships. And across from BK Arena, the national stadium has undergone a $125 million expansion that will qualify it to host FIFA events. Soon, Kigali will have its arena, renovated stadium and American-style entertainment district in one revitalized area.
"I think increasingly we're being seen as a sports hub on the African continent," Clare Akamanzi says.
The BAL, which Akamanzi says adds $10 million per year to Rwanda's economy, is key to the developing sports landscape. During the BAL's first three seasons, Rwanda paid NBA Africa on average $2.5 million per year to host the playoffs and display "Visit Rwanda" on the jerseys of every BAL team. Its national airline, RwandAir, was the league's official travel partner. The contract with BAL was extended in June 2023 for another five years, but the price tag increased, and Rwanda is now paying around $6 million to $7 million per year. (During the BAL's first three seasons, ESPN aired its games in parts of Africa. In 2021 and 2022, ESPN was the syndication agent for the BAL and had a contract with the state-owned Rwanda Broadcasting Agency under which ESPN and the BAL shared revenue.)
Kagame sometimes drives the sports frenzy through his social media. After his beloved Arsenal once lost the team's Premier League opener to Brentford, he tweeted, "We just must NOT excuse or Accept mediocrity." He added, "Can't we have a plan that really works??"
More recently, using artificial intelligence tools, Kagame supporters employed "a vast network of pro-government social media accounts" to promote the state, harass journalists and stimulate discussion about events like the BAL, according to a study by Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub. In a report titled, "Old Despots, New Tricks," researchers identified 464 accounts on X that produced hundreds of thousands of AI-generated messages in a "coordinated and centralized" effort to attack the "Rwanda Classified" investigative report and redirect the conversation to more positive material, such as the BAL.
"A number of these [accounts] used the Basketball in Africa League, which was happening around the same time as the ["Rwanda Classified"] report was released, as sort of a distraction, flooding any mentions of Rwanda, of Kagame with pictures of basketball players playing in Kigali, discussion of the teams," said assistant research professor Morgan Wack, a co-author of the report. "And a lot of these are short statements that were fed through ChatGPT."
Schwartz, the Freedom House consultant, says the NBA Africa deal "does that PR whitewashing that Rwanda is looking for in the international community."
When Akamanzi was still in her role with the Rwandan government, she wrote an op-ed in The EastAfrican that dismissed the allegation of "sportswashing" as a cynical tool of the West with racial and condescending undertones.
"I don't hear 'sportswashing' for advanced economies," Akamanzi told ESPN in Kigali before she took the NBA job. "I think it's a very unfair and discriminatory perception that should not be used the way it's being used today.
"Why would the NBA be criticized for giving ambition to Africans who want to play basketball?"
Akamanzi pointed to the United States and other countries that earn billions off sports and said, "If we got even just to .001 percent of that money, it will make a difference for our people."
The NBA is not new to the reality that going global in some places means partnering with governments that flout the types of issues players and the league often have championed at home. In 2019, a mere tweet from then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of Hong Kong independence sparked a TV and advertising boycott in China that cost the NBA hundreds of millions of dollars.
Later, ESPN reported that Chinese coaches at NBA training academies had been physically abusing young players, prompting the NBA to reevaluate its program and shutter an academy in western China, where the government was accused of committing human rights abuses against more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims.
WHEN TATUM SPEAKS with ESPN two days before Thanksgiving 2023, it's the first time anyone from the NBA has answered questions publicly about Rwanda's human rights record or the NBA's partnership with Kagame. ESPN requested an interview with either Silver or Tatum, and the league has made Tatum available.
He sits for a lengthy on-camera interview at the league's New York headquarters, high above Fifth Avenue, and he says the league is focused on basketball and its benefits wherever it does business, including in Rwanda.
"We take a lot of things into consideration," Tatum says. "When it comes to discussions with government about human rights violations, that's a role for the U.S. government and the State Department."
He is read the litany of allegations by the State Department and human rights groups against Kagame and concedes that "those are issues that are very concerning."
Tatum is calm but insistent in his responses, repeating time and again that the NBA's job is not to police human rights but rather to expand its business and create change through the game.
"We obviously condemn human rights issues no matter where they take place," Tatum says. "That being said, we operate in 200 countries and territories. ... And so to think that we would agree with the policies, the laws, the practices in every single one of those countries and territories that we operate or distribute our content in would be unrealistic."
The NBA, though, has long positioned itself as a leader on social justice issues.
"It's part of the DNA of the league," Silver once told ESPN.
In 2020, NBA players embraced the Black Lives Matter movement after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the league and players' union went on to form the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, a nonprofit designed to influence policies in cities with teams.
In 2017, the NBA took the extraordinary step of pulling its All-Star Game from North Carolina in response to a state law that limits antidiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the state.
Tatum is asked, then, why the NBA hasn't taken a stance on Rwanda's human rights issues in the four years since the BAL began?
He responds quickly and forcefully.
"I'm condemning human rights violations no matter where they take place, so I am condemning human rights violations," he says, noting that the NBA's team in North Carolina, the Charlotte Hornets, continued to operate there despite the law. "The reason that we moved the All-Star Game out of Charlotte is because, as I said, including in Rwanda, when we bring events, when we bring activities to markets, we have to be able to operate those things with our values. And if we can't do that, then we will not go to a particular market."
Tatum says several times that the NBA has been encouraged to do business with Rwanda by the U.S. government, specifically citing Peter Vrooman, the former ambassador to Rwanda. A State Department spokesperson confirmed to ESPN that Vrooman had encouraged the NBA's efforts there. Vrooman was not made available for comment.
As a nearly 40-minute interview winds down, Tatum is asked to describe Kagame's record on human rights. He says all of the NBA's discussions with Kagame have been about inspiring and connecting Rwandans through basketball. When reminded the question is about his own understanding of Rwanda's human rights record, Tatum says, "Well, again, I rely on what I read and what I hear from the State Department. And I would look at what the State Department says. I look at how they characterize that. And again, our mission, our goal here is really focusing on what we're doing on the continent to improve the lives of the Rwandan people."
ESPN sought comments from Ujiri and several NBA Africa investors about the Rwanda alliance and human rights abuses.
"I hear all the things that are said out there, but my relationship with [Kagame] is sports brought us together and we've been friends," Ujiri says. "And I deal with it that way, and I respect it that way."
He adds that he hasn't "encountered any issues or seen any," and "I'm 100 percent going on how we develop the game on the continent, because I'm selfish for the continent. And that's where I'm from, because if it's not done in Rwanda, that means it will never be done."
Grant Hill, a seven-time All-Star who also is co-owner and vice chair of the Atlanta Hawks, says, "I think we should have concerns in every country. Because every country all over the world has issues, including our own country. ... I think the approach should be, 'How can we use sport to effect change?'"
Former Chicago Bulls star Joakim Noah, who has been heavily involved in social justice initiatives, declined an interview request after initially saying he would participate.
A spokesperson for Obama said the former president declined comment but directed ESPN to a previous statement: "One of the things I've always loved about basketball is the fact that it brings people together and empowers young people everywhere. I'm proud to join the team at NBA Africa and look forward to seeing the change we can create across the continent."
Actor Forest Whitaker, who won an Academy Award for portraying Ugandan despot Idi Amin and has a nonprofit focused on peace and reconciliation, attended last year's BAL finals in Kigali. He sat in the VIP section near Kagame and cheered as the Rwanda president was announced.
In a statement provided by a spokesperson, Whitaker said, "In my view, it is the role of the U.S. Government to hold foreign governments accountable, while organizations like the NBA, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, and many others do important work on the ground to uplift communities and change lives."
BACK AT THE HOME of Victoire Ingabire, the Rwandan opposition figure reiterates that she understands and even supports the idea of the BAL. Still, she's concerned that fans and the media won't really get it; that basketball will wash away the government's human rights abuses and people will think, as Tatum says, "Rwanda works." Visitors to Rwanda largely see two things: its sparkling, efficient capital and the country's famous mountain gorillas, which attract the bulk of tourism dollars.
But neither Kigali nor the gorillas play a part in typical daily life for most Rwandans. More than 72% live outside the cities, in rural areas dotted with mud-built homes, many with limited access to fresh water or consistent electricity. Along the main roads that run through the country, it's common to see people biking -- or even walking -- miles to fill yellow containers from community wells.
"You have to go outside Kigali to see how the people live," Ingabire says.
She says if the NBA truly wants to make a difference in her country, it would pressure Kagame "about the lack of the democracy, the problem of the people who are in prison for nothing."
But Shackelford, the former U.S. diplomat who's now a foreign policy analyst, says such pressure would never work.
If the NBA tried to speak with Kagame about human rights abuses, "I think [he would] just kick them out," she says. "I imagine that the NBA is high-enough profile that they probably wouldn't disappear somebody from a hotel room. But he wouldn't tolerate it."
Last year, a few months after the NBA extended Rwanda's contract with the BAL, the Biden administration sanctioned and froze military aid to Rwanda over its support for the M23 fighters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, specifically citing the rebel group's use of child soldiers.
This March also saw Burundi's BAL team removed from competition after forfeiting two games because its players refused to wear jerseys that displayed the "Visit Rwanda" logo. Burundi had closed its border with Rwanda after accusing Kagame's government of supporting rebel fighters in Burundi. Kagame has denied this. Neither the BAL nor the NBA commented on the issue, other than to say that the team from Burundi had refused to comply with "league rules and requirements governing jerseys and uniforms."
As part of the extended contract that will carry on for the next four years, BAL players will continue to wear the "Visit Rwanda" logo on their jerseys.
Shackelford says the league's position that it is helping Rwandans is misguided. If she had an audience with Silver, she says, "I would tell him any organization that is aware, as he must be, that President Kagame ruthlessly represses any opposition, any civil society movements that want better for their country ... anyone who tries to burnish that image and participates in a project that helps him look good is, in some ways, complicit in the harms that that does to the Rwandan people.
"So if it's just about money and a shiny stadium, I get it. But he's kidding himself if he doesn't think that they are part of something that is more nefarious."
In the NBA offices in New York, Tatum is read Shackelford's comments and doesn't hesitate in his response.
"She's entitled to her opinion," he says, reiterating the encouragement the NBA has received from the State Department.
"We know that we are positively impacting those Rwandans' lives," Tatum says. "And we know that by engaging in that market that those people are better off."
At the end of May, the BAL championships were played for the fourth time in Kagame's BK Arena, and they will be held there two more times in the next four years.
Just a month earlier, on April 22, the U.S. State Department issued its latest report on Rwanda's human rights abuses. It began, as it has for more than a decade:
"There were no significant changes in the human rights situation in Rwanda during the year."
ESPN producer William Weinbaum and researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this story.
