quality:corruption, stylistic:tone, quality:correction
Early life

Kagame was born on 23 October 1957, the youngest of six children, in Tambwe, Ruanda-Urundi, a village located in what is now the Southern Province of Rwanda. His father, Deogratias Rutagambwa, was a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, from which the royal family had been derived since the 18th century or earlier. A member of the Bega clan, Deogratias Rutagambwa had family ties to King Mutara III, but he pursued an independent business career rather than maintain a close connection to the royal court. Kagame's mother, Asteria Bisinda, descended from the family of the last Rwandan queen, Rosalie Gicanda, that is from the Hebera branch of the royal Nyiginya clan.

At the time of Kagame's birth, Rwanda was a United Nations Trust Territory which had been ruled, in various forms, by Belgium since 1916 under a mandate to oversee eventual independence. Rwandans were made up of three distinct groups: the minority Tutsi were the traditional ruling class, and the Belgian colonial administration had long promoted Tutsi supremacy, while the majority Hutu were agriculturalists. The third group, the Twa, were a forest-dwelling pygmy people descended from Rwanda's earliest inhabitants, who formed less than 1% of the population.

Tensions between Tutsi and Hutu had been escalating during the 1950s, and culminated in the 1959 Rwandan Revolution. Hutu activists began killing Tutsi, forcing more than 100,000 Tutsis to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. Kagame's family abandoned their home and lived for two years in northeastern Rwanda, eventually crossing the border into Uganda. They moved gradually north, and settled in the Nshungerezi refugee camp in the Toro sub-region in 1962. It was around this time that Kagame first met Fred Rwigyema, the future leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Kagame began his primary education in a school near the refugee camp, where he and other Rwandan refugees learned how to speak English and began to integrate into Ugandan culture. At the age of nine, he moved to the respected Rwengoro Primary School, around 16 kilometres (10 mi) away. He subsequently attended Ntare School, one of the best schools in Uganda, which was also the alma mater of future Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. According to Kagame, the death of his father in the early-1970s, and the departure of Rwigyema to an unknown location, led to a decline in his academic performance and an increased tendency to fight those who belittled the Rwandan population. He was eventually suspended from Ntare and completed his studies at Old Kampala Secondary School.

After completing his education, Kagame made two visits to Rwanda, in 1977 and 1978. He was initially hosted by family members of his former classmates, but upon arrival in Kigali; he made contact with members of his own family. He kept a low profile on these visits, believing that his status as a well-connected Tutsi exile could lead to arrest. On his second visit, he entered the country through Zaire rather than Uganda to avoid suspicion. Kagame used his time in Rwanda to explore the country, familiarise himself with the political and social situation, and make connections that would prove useful to him in his later activities.