Paul Kagame is one of the more outspoken, commanding heads of state in Africa. The Rwandan President is credited with turning around a nation still emerging from a horrific genocide into one of Africa’s economic success stories. Critics, though, point to Kagame’s questionable human rights record, and claim the gaunt 55-year-old has an authoritarian streak. Kagame was in the news in 2012 for his government’s alleged backing of rebel fighters in neighboring Congo, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced in the chaos. Kagame and his defenders dismiss claims that they are behind the upheaval across the border and point the finger at the supposedly corrupt, ineffectual rule of Congolese President Joseph Kabila.