Paul Kagame (born October 23, 1957) is the current President of the Republic of Rwanda. He rose to prominence as the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), whose victory over the incumbent government in July 1994 effectively ended the Rwandan genocide. Under his leadership, Rwanda has been called Africa’s “biggest success story” and Kagame has become an public advocate of new models for foreign aid designed to help recipients become self-reliant though questions linger about whether or not he had a role in civilian massacres in Rwanda around the time of the 1994 genocide, and his country's occupation, plunder and killings of civilians in the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Second Congo War, in which an estimated 5.4 million people have died since 1998.

Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in Ruhango, Rwanda in October 1957 to Deogratius and Asteria Rutagambwa. In November 1959, an increasingly restive Hutu population, encouraged by the Belgian Military, sparked a revolt, eventually resulting in the overthrow of Mwami Kigeri V Ndahindurwa in 1961. During the 1959 revolt and its aftermath, more than 150,000 people were killed in the fighting, with the Tutsis suffering the greatest losses. Several thousand moved to neighbouring countries including Burundi and Uganda. In all, some 20,000 Tutsis were killed. In 1960 Kagame left with his family at the age of two and moved to Uganda with many other Tutsis. In 1962 they settled in the Gahunge refugee camp, Toro, where Kagame spent the rest of his childhood years. He attended Ntare Secondary School in Uganda. During this time Kagame was an "angry student" and bore an early fascination with revolutionaries like Che Guevara.

His military career started in 1979, when he joined Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) and spent years fighting as a guerrilla against the government of Milton Obote in what is commonly known in Uganda as the bush war.