Rwanda to host new Formula 1 grand prix in African 40-year first, calendar update, new races, Lewis Hamilton, sportswashing, human rights

Formula 1 will return to Africa as soon as 2030 at a brand-new circuit in Rwanda.

The African Grand Prix, to begin early next decade, will be the first race on the continent in around 40 years, dating back to when Formula 1 left South Africa at the end of 1993.

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A permanent circuit will be built near capital Kigali’s new international airport, around 50km or 70 minutes by road south of the city centre.

Construction has yet to begin and the layout has not yet been finalised, though reports suggest former driver Alex Wurz will design the track and a render has emerged.

The last race in Africa took place at South Africa’s Kyalami circuit, near Johannesburg.

Kyalami has periodically attempted to return to the calendar, but the circuit is no longer up to F1 standard, and it has struggled to fund upgrades.

Upgrade plans were approved last year, but circuit owners said the work would be conditional on winning the rights to host a grand prix.

By then several alternative African contenders emerged, including a proposed street circuit near Cape Town as well as a project attached to a planned tourism development in Morocco.

Rwanda, however, was the only one backed by a national government as part of the country’s plans to leverage sport to boost its international standing and attract tourism.

Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, announced in 2024 that his country intended to bid for a race while hosting that year’s FIA end-of-season prize-giving gala, where he also gave Max Verstappen his championship trophy.

Formula 1 has been eager to return to Africa, the only inhabited continent not represented on the championship calendar.

The push to return to Africa has been backed in particular by Lewis Hamilton, who has been determined to see a deal done before he retires from Formula 1.

“I’ve always said that we need to have a grand prix in Africa,” he said at the weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.

“It is, for me, the most important continent and the most beautiful continent. We’re on all the other continents but that one, and there should be no reason for it.

“It’s something I’ve been pushing for in the background, and Stefano (Domenicali, F1 CEO) has been amazing — he’s flown to Africa so many times over the last couple of years speaking to lots of different people.”

Hamilton’s paternal grandparents emigrated from Grenada in the West Indies to the United Kingdom, and he has traced their ancestry to West Africa, including Togo, Benin, Senegal and Nigeria.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE CALENDAR?

South Africa isn’t giving up on returning to the Formula 1 calendar.

“We are happy for Rwanda’s 2030 F1,” sport minister Gayton McKenzie wrote on social media.

“They have worked on it longer than SA and deserve it.

“Remember, though, that one country, Italy, has had two F1 (race)s a year, and some react like a continent of 55 countries can only get one.

“SA will get F1, even before 2030.”

While there should certainly be no objection to Africa hosting two or more grands prix given its seriously under-represented population of 1.6 billion people, logistically it’s difficult to see it happening in McKenzie’s short time frame, even if South Africa or any other African nation had a circuit ready for racing.

Formula 1’s calendar is currently capped at 24 rounds, and it’s fully subscribed for at least two more seasons.

F1 contracts expiring

2026: Netherlands*

2028: Mexico City, Portugal, Singapore

2029: Japan

2030: Abu Dhabi, Azerbaijan, China, Sao Paulo, Saudi Arabia

2031: Belgium, Italy, Türkiye

2032: Hungary, Qatar, Barcelona

2034: Great Britain, United States (Austin)

2035: Canada, Monaco, Spain (Madrid)

2036: Bahrain

2037: Australia, Las Vegas

2041: Austria, Miami

*not renewed

If Rwanda is to join the calendar in 2030, one of Mexico City, Portugal, Singapore and Japan will have to drop off the calendar, with another then needing to go to make room for a prospective second African race.

Singapore and Japan are unlikely to miss out on new deals. Mexico City is less certain, having last extended its deal by three years, but local promoters have been buoyed by the level of support last year even when national sporting icon Sergio Pérez was not on the grid.

Portugal, however, has a conspicuously short-term deal by modern F1 standards, running just two seasons from its 2027 return.

It appeared to be a stop-gap deal to bridge the time until Thailand could stand up a street race in Bangkok, the nation having approved $.89 billion in funding for a five-year deal last year.

Nothing was signed, however, and talk of the race has fizzled out since the former prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, was ousted by a constitutional court. Her successor, Anutin Charnvirakul, has made no public pronouncements about the grand prix proposal.

Thailand’s Buriram International Circuit, though capable of hosting an F1 race, is unlikely to be a favoured substitute, being almost 300km away from capital Bangkok.

But it isn’t the only contender — not even the only contender in Asia.

South Korea has floated a street circuit in Incheon, near Seoul, that could be ready to host racing by the end of the decade.

Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia’s new circuit, part of the Qiddiya megaproject, near capital Riyadh, is scheduled for completion in 2028. Though the plan is for the race to move from its current home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabian authorities have suggested they would be open to hosting multiple races.

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has also backed an F1 return to Argentina, where support for the sport is booming thanks to Franco Colapinto and where renovations are underway for MotoGP racing from next season.

All these proposed events are in very early stages of readiness to host Formula 1 — but then so is a prospective South African Grand Prix.

With so much competition and perhaps just one slot — or maybe even no slots at all — a second African race would appear to be at least five years off, if not more.

F1’S AFRICAN HISTORY

Only two African countries have ever hosted a championship grand prix: Morocco and South Africa.

The Moroccan Grand Prix was held just once, in 1958, at the Ain-Diab Circuit, a street track in Casablanca. It was the final round of the season and the title decider, with Stirling Moss winning the race but British compatriot Mike Hawthorn claiming the championship by one point from second place.

South Africa hosted its first grand prix in 1962 in what was then known as East London, now KuGompo City. As is the case with so many races, the success of the event sparked jealousy from national rival Johannesburg, where organisers set about pinching the race.

Johannesburg organisers built a 4.1km circuit on a plot of hilly land 30km north of the city centre and called it Kyalami. Extremely fast and featuring natural elevation changes, the circuit successfully lured Formula 1 inland in 1967, where the South African Grand Prix would be held for the next 26 years.

The first edition of the race almost delivered Africa its first grand prix winner, with John Love, from what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, leading until a late fuel stop dropped him to second.

Instead Pedro Rodriguez — one of the Rodriguez brothers for whom Mexico City’s F1 track is named — became the first Mexican to win a grand prix. Organisers embarrassingly did not have the Mexican national anthem ready for the podium, and reports suggest they instead played either South of the Border or the Mexican Hat Dance. Rodriguez apparently carried a recording of his anthem with him from then on.

It took until 1975 for South Africa to have its own winner at home: Jody Scheckter, who won the 1979 world championship for Ferrari. He’s the only African to win a race, having accumulated 10 victories.

The circuit was popular, but Formula 1’s commitment to South Africa was controversial and grew increasingly so over time as international pressure over the country’s apartheid regime grew.

Despite most other international competitions withdrawing from the country or banning South African involvement in the 1960s and 1970s, F1 continued racing in Kyalami until the end of 1985.

The sport farcically fumbled its way into running that final race. Drivers deferred to their teams, which were afraid to withdraw lest their rivals scored against them. F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone refused to call off the race until the paying TV broadcasters pulled the plug. The motorsport governing body, the FIA, spectacularly claimed it couldn’t alter the calendar.

Formula 1 returned in 1992 for its first post-apartheid race, but by then the circuit had been reconfigured on cost grounds. Less appealing as a driving challenge and without the funds to continue paying for the race, Kyalami fell off the calendar seemingly for good at the end of 1993.

THE DIFFICULT QUESTIONS OVER RWANDA’S RACE

The new race in Rwanda is the latest big-spending sporting initiative by the landlocked East African nation, home to around 15 million people.

Already it has significant sponsorship agreements with English Premier League teams Arsenal and Aston Villa as well as Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and US sport giants LA Clippers and LA Rams. It also hosted the UCI Road World Championship in 2025, and it is partnered with the NBA on the Basketball Africa League.

That’s despite Rwanda being by far the least wealthy country on the Formula 1 calendar. It has the smallest GDP per capita of any host nation, with just US$1198 per person. It’s ranked 194th of 213 countries by this metric and is 39th among Africa’s 54 nations, though it is among the continent’s four fastest-growing economies.

More than a quarter of the population sits below the poverty line, though the government claims these deals will bring economy-boosting tourism and investment to the country.

Critics have described the spending as ‘sportswashing’ by a nation with a contentious human rights record.

Human Rights Watch says the Kagame administration “continues to target those perceived as a threat to the government” and that “high-profile critics have been arrested or threatened, and authorities regularly fail to conduct credible investigations into cases of enforced disappearances and suspicious deaths of government opponents.

“Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace, and fair trial standards are routinely flouted in many sensitive political cases, in which security-related charges are often used to prosecute prominent government critics.”

Kagame has been in power since 2000. He was most recently elected to the post in 2024, when he won 99.18 per cent of the vote. Freedom House said the election was neither free nor fair and considers the country ‘not free’ in its latest Freedom in the World report.

Kagame was a commander of rebel forces in the Rwandan civil war that ended the 1994 genocide and has previously rejected what he has described as moral lecturing of Africans by Europeans.

Last year the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo implored Formula 1 to cut ties with Rwanda over United Nations accusations that the country was backing rebels fighting Congolese forces near the borders shared by both nations.

Earlier this year the DRC and M23 rebel group agreed to a road map for peace talks, though the fighting continues.

Formula 1 is not unfamiliar with this tightrope, having had to answer similar questions of sportswashing, values and morality with the addition of several other grands prix in the last two decades.

But Rwanda could be its most complex task yet.