Kigali is the capital of Rwanda

18 January 2024

During a debate on the government’s Safety of Rwanda Bill yesterday, the Conservative MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Thérèse Coffey said of Labour’s Yvette Cooper MP: “I was somewhat astonished by the speech of the shadow home secretary, who cannot even get the name of the country right, talking about the Kigali Government when we are talking about Rwanda—a respected country that has recently been president of the Commonwealth.”

Kigali is however the capital of Rwanda.

After we first published this post, Dr Coffey’s office told Full Fact that she “didn’t mix anything up at all”, and said that Ms Cooper should have referred to the Rwandan government rather than the Kigali Government, adding: “We would not call the French government the Paris government. We would not call the US government the Washington DC government.”

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