A security company backed by Rwanda’s ruling party has been hired to guard TotalEnergie’s giant gas project in Mozambique as Kigali continues its commercial expansion in the country three years after its army helped put down an Islamist insurgency.
Isco Segurança, a joint venture between Rwanda’s Isco Global Limited and a local Mozambican company, is providing unarmed guarding services at the $20bn liquefied natural gas development in Cabo Delgado province, Total confirmed to the Financial Times in response to questions.
After an attack by Islamist insurgents on the neighbouring town of Palma killed dozens of people, including foreign contractors working on the project, Total declared force majeure and paused the project in 2021.
Rwanda has subsequently deployed more than 4,000 troops to secure the region under an agreement between Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame.
The Rwandan troops have helped restore security but neither leader has disclosed how the deployment — estimated to have cost Rwanda hundreds of millions of dollars to date — has been funded.
Kagame, whose Rwandan Patriotic Front helped end a 1994 genocide of the country’s ethnic Tutsi population by Hutu extremists, has ruled Rwanda since 2000. The former rebel commander has crushed political opposition in the country but won praise in some circles for improving Rwanda’s economy and building a ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy. He was re-elected for a fourth term this week, winning 99 per cent of the vote according to preliminary results, after at least three prominent opposition candidates were barred from running.
In recent years the tiny central African nation has developed an outsized role in the region, partly by deploying soldiers to other African countries, either as part of UN peacekeeping missions or through bilateral arrangements, like in Mozambique and Central African Republic.
But evidence that Rwandan companies have followed the army into such countries has led to criticism that the military deployments are being used to advance Rwanda’s economic interests.
“There are many unanswered questions about the arrangements between Maputo and Kigali relating to the Rwandan security deployment in Cabo Delgado,” said Piers Pigou, head of the southern Africa programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Johannesburg. “The total lack of transparency feeds ongoing speculation about the kinds of concessions, contracts and forward mortgaging of LNG income flow that are being secured by Rwandan interests.”
Isco Global is one of several Rwandan companies to have established subsidiaries in Mozambique since 2021, in sectors including security, construction and mining.
Isco Global’s parent Intersec Security Company was established in 1995, a year after Kagame’s RPF took power from the Hutu-led government. Intersec is a subsidiary of Crystal Ventures, an investment group founded by the party, which dominates many parts of the Rwandan economy.
In rare public comments about Crystal Ventures in 2017, Kagame said it was set up by the RPF to stimulate economic activity at a time when few foreign businesses were willing to invest in the country. Crystal Ventures’ current chief executive is Jack Kayonga, a former head of Rwanda’s sovereign wealth fund.
Total declined to comment on the ownership of Isco Segurança but said the company had been selected following a “rigorous tender process”, having made “the most competitive offer”. Isco Global owns 70 per cent of Isco Segurança, according to corporate records dated June 24 2022.
Total “welcomes bids from all contractors who can compete, including those contractors who have a presence in Rwanda or are Rwandan-owned”, it said. “Isco Segurança has been through a due diligence process following the rules and there was no impediment to work with them.”
The Total-led LNG project is also working with a company called Radarscape, which Mozambican corporate records show is an indirect subsidiary of Crystal Ventures’ international arm Macefield Ventures.
Radarscape’s contracts include a 2024 agreement to build a solar plant for the LNG project in partnership with an Italian group, Total confirmed. Radarscape had passed the same due diligence checks as Isco Segurança, it said.
Isco, Crystal Ventures, Macefield Ventures and the Rwandan government did not respond to several requests for comment.
Total hopes to restart construction of the Mozambique LNG project this year but for now force majeure remains in place.
For this reason, according to a person with knowledge of the contracting process, other businesses put in more expensive bids to work on the project than the Rwandan companies, which appeared to be more comfortable operating in the region given the continued presence of Rwandan soldiers.
Radarscape is 99 per cent owned by Macefield Ventures’ local subsidiary Macefield Ventures Mozambique and 1 per cent owned by an individual named Jean-Paul Rutagarama, according to corporate records dated April 28 2022.
A person of the same name is listed on a LinkedIn profile as a “media officer at Crystal Ventures” and describes himself as “Mister fixer”. Rutagarama also owns 1 per cent of Macefield Ventures Mozambique, according to records dated February 1 2022. Rutagarama did not respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn.
Total has previously stated that it had no role in organising or funding Rwanda’s military deployment to the region, however the company has strengthened its ties with Rwanda over the past three years.
Rwanda has no oil and gas reserves but Total chief executive Patrick Pouyanné met Kagame in Kigali in January 2022 and signed a co-operation agreement to explore opportunities to develop renewable energy projects in the country. Five months later the pair were photographed together on the track at the F1 Grand Prix in Monaco.
Rwanda has also improved its relations with France, which Kagame had repeatedly accused of aiding the 1994 genocide through its support of the then Hutu-led government. In May 2021, six weeks before the first Rwandan troops were deployed to Mozambique, President Emmanuel Macron made the first visit to Kigali by a French leader in more than 10 years and approved €500mn of development aid.
“You need to find allies to understand things,” Pouyanné told the FT in 2022, when asked about his January meeting with Kagame. “It’s a small, sympathetic country. It has a president who has influence well outside Rwanda, in the African Union. And we’re trying to move into east Africa. That’s new for us.”
