Priti Patel is playing into Paul Kagame’s hands

If President Paul Kagame has been tracking the furore over Priti Patel’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, he’s been doing it on the hoof. Kagame moves constantly these days: the news broke while he was en route to Barbados after a visit to Jamaica. In the past two months he has been to Congo-Brazzaville, Kenya (twice), Zambia, Germany (twice), Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Mauritania, Senegal and Belgium.

How the president of one of Africa’s poorest nations can afford all this travelling is a puzzle, and the fact that his Gulfstream jet is supplied by Crystal Ventures, his Rwandan Patriotic Front’s monopolistic investment arm, raises interesting budgetary questions. In a country where checks on the executive have been whittled away, the dividing line between a ruling party’s business interests and the presidential expense account is distinctly blurred.

Rwandan opposition critics wonder if he is scouting where best to stash his assets in preparation for the day every African leader dreads, when a military coup dispatches him into exile. Others speculate he just feels safer on the road, validated by every red carpet and guard of honour.

More likely, the globetrotting forms part of a decades-long drive to establish Kagame as Africa’s de facto leader-in-chief, not only an indispensable partner for any western government engaging with the continent, but a source of radical solutions to nagging domestic problems. While running a country only slightly larger than Sicily, Kagame punches so far above his weight, the boxing ring looks dwarfed by his presence. He is the Mighty Mouse of the African Great Lakes.

It’s clear why it suits Ms Patel to send her political undesirables to Rwanda. Back in 2003, Oliver Letwin, then the shadow home secretary, spoke about sending asylum seekers to a foreign island ‘far, far away’ – but the problem was finding a place that would agree.