Visit Rwanda? No, I'd rather visit Tottenham say Arsenal fans.

‘Visit Rwanda’ is visible on the sleeve of the men’s and women’s Arsenal teams, as well as on advertising boards around the Premier League club’s main Emirates Stadium. It features on the sleeves of PSG’s women’s side, and on the training and warm-up kits of their men’s team. It also appeared on the latter’s sleeve during the Club World Cup this past summer.

The government of Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president since 2000, has invested heavily via the country’s tourism board in commercial deals with Arsenal, PSG, Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich, and has hosted international sporting events such as the UCI Road World Cycling Championship and the FIFA Congress in 2023, where Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, was re-elected — unopposed — to serve a second four-year term.

Arsenal’s deal with Visit Rwanda started in 2018 and will end at the conclusion of this season, so the logo would be on their sleeves if they lift the Premier League trophy in May. The club’s annual financial accounts show the partnership has been worth around £10million a year ($13.4m at the current rate). Bayern initially signed with Visit Rwanda in 2023 on a five-year contract, which was restructured earlier this year. Atletico signed their three-year contract in April.

Highlighting the strength of the relationship between Arsenal’s American owners, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE) — the Kroenke family who initially bought a 9.9 per cent stake in 2007, increased that to approximately 63 per cent four years later and took full control in 2018 — and Rwandan Development Board (RDB), Visit Rwanda recently announced a deal with the Los Angeles Rams, the Kroenkes’ NFL franchise, and their SoFi Stadium home in that U.S. city.

Most of the teams’ deals with Kagame’s country have been plagued by protests and accusations of sportswashing.

Arsenal fans showed their distaste for the sponsorship through the Gunners For Peace group, which, in April, unveiled a ‘Visit Tottenham’ billboard outside the Emirates as part of a campaign against the club’s Visit Rwanda ties. A survey by Arsenal Supporters Trust, published in July, showed 90 per cent of the respondents wanted the club to cut ties with Visit Rwanda once the contract expires in 2026. Just under three per cent said they were happy for it to continue.

As well as its ‘Visit Tottenham’ billboard outside the Emirates in April, Gunners For Peace said: “We would rather wear anything on our sleeves — even Tottenham (Arsenal’s neighbours and bitterest rivals). So we created the ‘Visit Tottenham’ campaign to highlight just how wrong Visit Rwanda is.”

At the turn of the year, PSG fans launched a ‘Stop Visit Rwanda’ petition, which was signed by more than 75,000 people, calling on the club to cut its commercial ties to the east African country. They said continuing the partnership “would risk giving the impression (PSG) is closing its eyes to human-rights violations”.

Rwanda was, of course, the destination that the last UK government wanted to send asylum seekers to, but only a few volunteers ever arrived and Rwanda's government trousered the money up front.

While supporters of Arsenal, Bayern and PSG have protested against their clubs taking funds from Visit Rwanda, deals with teams in the United States and other Western sporting institutions mean we will continue to see the east African country’s branding for some time to come.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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