Events in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have thrown into sharp focus sponsorship deals involving the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), the French football champions Paris Saint-Germain as well as Bayern Munich and Arsenal.
All three teams advanced on Tuesday and Wednesday to the quarter-finals of the Champions League to continue the projection of the RDB's "Visit Rwanda" logo in European club football's most prestigious competition.
PSG progressed at the expense of Liverpool following a penalty shoot-out at Anfield. Bayern cruised past Bundesliga rivals Bayer Leverkusen 5-0 on aggregate and Arsenal spanked the Dutch outfit PSV Eindhoven 9-3 over two legs.
In the last eight, PSG will play Aston Villa, Bayern will take on Inter Milan and Arsenal will face defending champions Real Madrid.
While the clubs battle for supremacy, their association with the RDB is coming under increasing scrutiny due to rows over the involvement of Rwandan troops in the M23 group which is fighting soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Human rights groups as well as the United Nations say they have evidence that Rwanda is actively bolstering the M23 in its sweep through Goma and Bukavu in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.
Authorities in Kigali deny providing arms and troops to M23 rebels. They say Rwandan forces are acting in self-defence against the Congolese army and militias hostile to Rwandans, especially Tutsi.
Possible deal
But as Angolan officials attempt to broker a peace deal between the Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi and M23 leaders, campaigners in Europe have called on the football clubs to sever their contracts with a brand that they claim has become tarnished.
"Ideally, the contract should end immediately," said Jordan Madiande who launched a petition in January calling for PSG's deal with the RDB to be severed.
Arsenal's association with "Visit Rwanda" began in May 2018. Its logo appears on the shirt sleeves of Arsenal's men's, women's and youth teams and can be seen on boards at the Emirates Stadium in north London and on interview backdrops.
PSG signed its initial contract with the RDB in 2019. It was renewed in May 2023 and is scheduled to end after the 2025 season.
Under the PSG deal with the RDB, the logo "Visit Rwanda" appears on the training and warm-up kits of the men's teams. Rwandan tea and coffee is also served at kiosks and in the suites at the PSG stadium. In both instances current and former players travel to Rwanda for promotional tours.
"If it's not renewed, that will be acceptable," added Madiande whose parents came to France from the DRC in the 1980s. "It will still be a victory."
The 32-year-old social worker's petition states that as an internationally respected club, PSG has an important role to play in promoting positive values.
It adds: "However, by maintaining this partnership with "Visit Rwanda", our club could be perceived as ignoring the geopolitical and humanitarian realities of this situation, and risk giving the impression that it is turning a blind eye to human rights violations."
Comment
PSG has yet to comment publicly on the petition which has amassed 73,000 signatures nor has there been a response to a letter from the DRC's minister of foreign affairs, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner.
In January, she called on PSG's bosses as well as their counterparts at Arsenal and Bayern Munich to review their sponsorship deals.
"At a time when Rwanda is waging war, Rwanda's guilt in this conflict has become indisputable," wrote Kayikwamba Wagner. "Your sponsor is directly responsible for this misery."
Arsenal have maintained their links with the RDB so too Bayern Munich who dispatched a fact-finding team to Rwanda.
Congo's government says at least 7,000 people have died in the fighting since January. According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), at least 600,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since November.
"Maybe before, PSG's executives didn't really know what was going on or they didn't understand the scale of it," said Madiande.
"But new things are happening. Bukavu was taken since the petition began. There are the UN reports that say what is happening and there are international reports from human rights organisations. We didn't invent it. So the question is now, can PSG go on with this?"
Contract
The controversy surrounding the 15 million-euro a year contract has also illuminated the extent and depth of Rwanda's footprint in the world of sport.
Rwanda and South Africa are both bidding to stage a Formula 1 grand prix in 2027 - potentially the continent's first such race since 1993. A state-of-the-art track is being built to F1 standards close to Kigali's new Bugesera airport in the case of success.
In September, Rwanda will welcome the world cycling championships - the first time since its inception in 1921 that the planet's elite operators will compete in Africa
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame was also one of the strongest advocates for the establishment in 2021 of the Basketball Africa League. Critics say such promotion is sportswashing - using sporting events to gloss over official clampdowns on political opponents and human rights abuses.
"It is very much part of Kagame's toolkit," said Michela Wrong, author of several books on Rwanda and the DRC including Rwanda Assassins sans frontierès. "He does sportswashing superbly well.
"And it's because it works in his favour, He's also genuinely an Arsenal fan, so he likes to go and watch the matches himself.
"Rwanda is managing to get its its message out to a very particular audience. It's a young audience. It's a trendy audience. It's an audience that possibly isn't that well informed about the niceties of African politics over the last 30 years and one that can't really be bothered to read up on that sort of detail.
"So it's a way of sort of going over the heads of people like me and journalists. Rwanda goes over our heads and reaches a young audience that really doesn't want to engage with those issues. So I think it's a very effective way of marketing a certain kind of message.
"This is sportswashing taken to quite a very high level, a level that I don't think you can see anywhere else in Africa."
In February, the RDB, responded to queries about its sponsorship deals on social media. It claimed the DRC was undermining its international partnerships through misinformation and political pressure.
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Madiande, a life-long PSG fan, said he would wait to see if the PSG sponsorship deal was renewed before deciding if the campaign should be stepped up.
"We think that clubs are intelligent and that they will understand that this is serious," he said.
"We think that with the values defended by PSG, Arsenal and Bayern Munich and especially with their histories, that it's going to stop. But if it doesn't, there will be further action. It will be more visible."
Ligue 1 pacesetters PSG host arch rivals Marseille at the Parc des Princes on Sunday night. Victory over the visitors, who occupy second place, would extend PSG's lead to 19 points with eight games remaining.
"I've been a PSG fan for as long as I can remember," said Madiande. "But if their approach doesn't change, I'll have to ask myself lots of questions. That will be hard. I've supported them when they nearly went down to the second division and I'm still a supporter now when things are going better.
"They really can't need this money from this source. There must be many organisations out there willing to be associated the club."
