Intelligence Brief | Kagame Forms New Cabinet After Sacking Prime Minister: Power Realignment in Rwanda, July 2025
Ujasusi Blog’s Great Lakes Region Monitoring Team | 27 July 2025 | 0100 BST
🔎 Executive Summary
On 24 July 2025, President Paul Kagame announced the formation of a new Rwandan cabinet following his sudden dismissal of Prime Minister Édouard Ngirente. The newly appointed cabinet comprises 21 ministers, 10 ministers of state, and four high-ranking institutional heads now elevated to cabinet rank. Kagame's installation of Justin Nsengiyumva, a technocrat with a background in economic policy and finance, as the new Prime Minister signals a calculated move to recalibrate the executive branch amid shifting domestic and regional conditions.
The new cabinet reflects three parallel strategies:
👉 (1) consolidation of centralised executive control,
👉 (2) strategic rotation and recycling of loyalists, and
👉 (3) grooming of emerging technocratic elites.
While the appointments may appear administrative, they mask a deeper playbook of regime endurance, institutional sterilisation of dissent, and succession choreography under Kagame’s post-2024 political design.