Two buses chauffeuring journalists embedded with the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) exited Afungi airport in Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique. The airport, situated inside the main camp of Total Energies, is where the French multi-energy giant is developing a $20bn liquefied natural gas project.

It’s perhaps a symbol of what can happen when the restive province is calm.

Harnessing an insurgency

That was not the scene in early 2021, when a group of Islamist insurgents, Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaah, aka Al-Shabaab (though not connected to notorious Al-Shabaab of Somalia) overran the area, forcing Total to suspend the LNG project.

Unable to defeat the insurgents, Mozambique inked a bilateral security deal with Rwanda, leading to deployment of about 3,000 Rwanda soldiers and police in July 2021. Through joint operations with Mozambique soldiers, they drove insurgents out of areas they had captured.

Normality reigns, for the most part. Displaced people have returned to their homes and shower Rwandan soldiers with praise. Some locals wish Rwanda could stay forever and analysts don’t dispute the Rwanda effect.

“For the local people, the most important thing is security,” says João Feijó, a researcher at the Observatório do Meio Rural (Rural Environment Observatory), a non-profit organisation based in Mozambique’s capital Maputo.

“Rwanda provided the most important [solution] for the local people,” he tells The Africa Report.

And Rwanda has ensured their presence is visible – the security personnel dressed in the Intersec Security Company (ISCO) uniform around the Total camp are ubiquitous back in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

Security… and business?

The arrival of Rwandan troops was followed by the arrival of Rwanda’s businesses, including companies owned by the government. One of them is ISCO, a subsidiary of Crystal Ventures, a company owned by Rwanda’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party.

In Mozambique, it operates under another subsidiary ISCO Segurança, in which ISCO owns 70%. However, it’s not the only company.

Radar Scape, also linked to Crystal ventures, won a contract worth $800,000 to build a settlement village for people forced out of their homes by the gas project.

As of 2022, Rwandans had established more companies in CAR than any other foreign nationals, except Cameroonians.

“We do have Rwandan companies in Mozambique doing business, even in Cabo Delgado. I am sure you have seen them,” Rwanda government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said in response to questions from The Africa Report when journalists returned to Kigali.

Beyond the companies linked to the ruling party, individual Rwandans are flocking to Cabo Delgado to do business. The Africa Report interacted with three Rwandans, who have set up business in Palma town.

A Rwandan who has ventured in the juice business said his uncle encouraged him to move to Mozambique. Business is doing well and he hopes to stay as long as possible, with plans to expand into farming.

It’s the same story in the Central African Republic (CAR), where Rwanda also has two deployments — one through a bilateral agreement — while another through the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). Bilateral deployment began at the end of 2020 while the UN mission deployment started in 2014.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) recently reported that Rwandans are aggressively pursuing an array of businesses in CAR.

“As of 2022, Rwandans had established more companies in CAR than any other foreign nationals except Cameroonians. The number is still growing: more than a hundred Rwandan firms are registered in the country today, up from about 20 in 2019,” the Crisis Group said in a report.

A new model for Africa’s security

In an era when UN peace missions across the continent are crumbling and closing, Rwanda offers an alternative approach to peace and security on the continent. In 2023, the UN closed its missions in Mali (MINUSMA)  and Sudan (UNITAMS) and will start withdrawing from Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), where it has operated for more than two decades.

But questions remain as to how bilateral security missions, which Rwanda thinks should be the model for the continent, can be funded. Rwanda has created a system that makes security agreements with business deals.

Makolo makes a case for Rwanda, and for operating in CAR. “Do we have a competitive advantage for CAR? Yes, we do because we have Rwandair that flies direct to Bangui two or three times a week so people are able to access the country,” she says.

“CAR people also [find] it easy to access Rwanda, which they do. Some of them have children in schools in Kigali,” she says. Makolo also points out that CAR citizens have come to Rwanda to establish businesses.

Makolo says business exchanges are good and it’s what Rwanda wants to champion in Africa. “We want to invest in each other’s countries, help each other do business, do tourism with each other…there is nothing wrong with it.”

Business opportunities in CAR and Mozambique are not just exclusively available for Rwanda but also “companies from other countries”, she says. But that can only happen once a conducive environment is put in place, whose first prerequisite is security.

Makolo says if there are more opportunities to do business in Mozambique, especially in sectors such as construction, where the country has competent companies, “they will go and compete fairly to do those jobs”.

At what cost

ICG reported that in CAR, Rwandan soldiers sometimes work as bodyguards for Rwandan business owners in the interior, especially in mining fields. Others are guarding agriculture ventures such as rice farms belonging to Rwandans.

But Makolo denies this saying: “Our security forces are there to provide security for and work with the CAR government. We are not there to protect businesses.”

ICG reported that in September 2022, CAR youth demonstrated against a Rwandan artisanal gold mining company that had started digging gold in areas outside its concession in Moboma, a district in the south-western Lobaye prefecture.

And in Mozambique, Rwanda is displacing the army. Protection of Total’s gas project was previously a deal for the army. Piers Pigou, head of the Southern Africa programme at the Institute for Security Studies, argues that there are many unanswered questions in the new security set up.

“What is the role of the Mozambique security forces in security arrangements at Afungi because there were 750 plus soldiers meant to be there paid for by Total,” he says.

With no details between Rwanda and Mozambique’s economic cooperation agreement which resulted in government companies following uniformed men and women, Feijó says questions remain. “The point is, what capacity does Rwanda have to influence and get contracts?” he says.

Feijó also worries that entry of Rwandan companies could have a big influence on local companies in the LNG project. “There is a lost opportunity for Mozambican companies, especially in the security sector where Rwanda companies are,” he says.

Those who will lose out, he says, are Mozambique army veterans who had the “expectation to get the contracts”.