F1 signs ten-year Rwanda deal for African Grand Prix from early 2030s

The deal

F1 announced the ten-year agreement on Tuesday, with President Paul Kagame, chief executive Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem appearing together. The race will be called the African Grand Prix and will be presented by Visit Rwanda, the country's tourism board. F1 said the race would come in the early 2030s; it has not announced an exact date.

F1 last raced in Africa at Kyalami in 1993. By the time a Rwandan round arrives, the gap will be close to four decades.

The Bugesera circuit

The race will be staged at a purpose-built circuit in Bugesera, roughly 40km south of Kigali and next to the new Kigali International Airport. It is planned to FIA Grade 1 standard, the grade a world championship round requires. The track is part of a wider sports, tourism, infrastructure and commercial project led by the Rwanda Development Board. The venue is meant to work year-round, hosting international motorsport, conferences and entertainment rather than one weekend a year. F1 says the layout will use the area's elevation changes and include viewing points for spectators.

None of it has been built yet. F1's announcement did not include a cost for the circuit or a value for the ten-year agreement.

The pitch from Kigali and the calendar problem

"Today belongs to Africa," Kagame said. "For more than three decades, the world's premier motorsport championship has raced without this continent, and that changes with this agreement." He described the partnership as an investment in Rwanda's future that would bring jobs, skills, tourism and new business to the country and the region.

Domenicali said: "Today is a landmark moment for Formula One." He said the sport would race on every inhabited continent from the next decade. He put Africa's F1 fanbase at more than 100 million people and said the number continues to grow rapidly.

The calendar is the harder constraint. Only four races hold contracts that expire before the 2030 season: Mexico City, Singapore, Japan and Portugal. A slot has to open before Rwanda can take one. The absence of a concrete start date underlines the uncertainty around both the construction time required for the new circuit and the availability of spots on the schedule.

Louise Young, F1's outgoing chief race promotion officer, said a week earlier that the championship wants to write "new history where there isn't tradition necessarily".

Kinshasa objects

DR Congo's foreign minister, Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, said that allowing Rwanda to host a Grand Prix was "morally indefensible". She also welcomed Formula One's return to Africa. She said she had warned Domenicali and F1 authorities of that in February 2025, when she wrote to him requesting that F1 avoid a "blood-stained association" with Rwanda.

The objection comes amid a war in eastern Congo. Rwanda-backed M23 rebels captured Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu in February, and the DRC says more than 7,000 people were killed in the first two months of the conflict. By mid-2025, more than 7.8 million people had been displaced in eastern DRC, according to BlackBook Motorsport. The US says Rwanda has up to 7,000 troops in DRC, and UN experts found Kigali exercised command and control over M23. Rwanda denies backing the rebels, saying its security measures protect its territory against armed groups across the border.

The United States sanctioned Rwanda's military and four senior officers in March 2026 over allegations that it supports M23. Rwanda rejected the sanctions as one-sided and said they misrepresented the conflict.

Kayikwamba Wagner said Congo backs South Africa's rival effort to host a race instead. Rwandan authorities did not publicly comment on her objections, TRT Afrika reported.

Congo has objected to Rwandan sports promotion before, criticising high-profile sponsorship deals with leading European soccer clubs.

Amnesty International has accused Rwanda of "sportswashing" through sponsorship deals with Arsenal and Aston Villa. The human rights group told BBC Sport it was seeking to use the Aston Villa partnership to create positive PR.