KIGALI — Formula 1 and the government of Rwanda have announced a historic 10-year deal for a new African Grand Prix in the capital Kigali, with the first edition to be held in 2030 at the earliest. The championship will head to a yet-to-be-built natural road course 40km south of Kigali, next to the capital's under-construction Bugesera international airport, in an event officially billed as the 'Formula 1 African Grand Prix, presented by Visit Rwanda'. Regardless of the start date, the 10-year agreement will see F1 return to the African continent for the first time since the 1993 South African Grand Prix.
The deal was announced on Tuesday at a press conference in Kigali attended by Rwandan President Paul Kagame, F1 president and chief executive Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. The Bugesera track, designed by former driver Alex Wurz and his design company, is expected to make full use of Kigali's hilly terrain to create a challenging layout and forms part of a wider investment plan by the Rwandan Development Board in tourism, infrastructure and commercial development.
“Today belongs to Africa. For more than three decades, the world's premier motorsport championship has raced without this continent, and that changes with this agreement," Kagame said. "Rwanda is proud to host the Formula 1 African Grand Prix, and to share this moment with more than 100 million fans across Africa, many of them young people who deserve to see the sport at home and to see themselves in it: as engineers, technicians, entrepreneurs and, one day, drivers. This ten-year partnership is also an investment in Rwanda's future. The circuit in Bugesera, alongside the new international airport, will bring jobs, skills, tourism and new business to our country and our region for decades to come, because our aim was never a single race weekend, but a lasting benefit for our people."
Domenicali said: "Today is a landmark moment for Formula 1. With Rwanda joining the calendar from the next decade, our sport will race in every inhabited continent, bringing the World Championship closer than ever to fans around the globe. Africa has always been part of Formula 1's future, and from the beginning we were determined to return in the right way, with the right partner, a long-term commitment and a clear vision for creating meaningful impact." He added the project was about "much more than hosting a Grand Prix" and would create lasting economic and social benefits through tourism, investment, skills development and local business growth. Ben Sulayem added: "The return of the FIA Formula One World Championship to Africa is a historic moment for our sport and an important step in the continued global growth of motorsport."
Talks between F1 and Rwanda accelerated in 2024, with the central African nation keen to attract major sporting events to boost tourism and business. Kigali hosted the UCI Road World Championships in cycling last year and staged the FIA's annual Prize Giving Ceremony in 2024, with Max Verstappen among the FIA world champions travelling to the country to collect his fourth F1 world title trophy. Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, a long-time proponent of a return to Africa, said earlier this year: "For the past six years I've been fighting in the background to get a grand prix. So, sitting with the stakeholders and asking them the question, why are we not in Africa? We're on every other continent, why not Africa? I know they're really trying."