(Don’t) Visit Rwanda: Rwanda’s Sportswashing and Its Western Facilitators

Since the late 2010s, Rwanda has advertised its Visit Rwanda logo on the jerseys of prominent European football teams and has built new sports stadiums to host international sports competitions. Such strategies reflect the practice of sportswashing, which refers to the utilization of sports by political actors to gain global legitimacy while diverting attention from unjust processes occurring in their home countries. Dubinsky analyzes the effectiveness of Rwanda’s sportswashing through the concept of authoritarian image management, arguing that the mutual interests shared between authoritarian and Western actors facilitate the country’s sportswashing, despite the critiques it attracts.