The decision by the US to approve an investment deal with Rwanda, the first with an African country since 1998, is seen as a political victory for President Paul Kagame, who has been busy cutting fresh deals with powerful nations.

On Monday, the US Senate approved the United States-Rwanda Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) initiated by former US president George W. Bush and President Kagame in 2008.

The deal, announced after President Kagame visited the US, came days after the Rwandan leader visited France, the first such trip by a Rwandan head of state since the genocide, as he sought to build diplomatic, economic and commercial ties.

While details on all the deals President Kagame inked during the visits remain scanty, analysts said the leader was keen to marshal new international friends to help build the economy as the world slowly slides into another painful economic recession.

A BIT is a treaty of law between the US and another nation meant to promote trade between the two states by providing legal protections for both countries — including transparency in governance and neutral arbitration.

It establishes rules that protect the rights of US investors abroad and provide market access for future US investment. While Kagame’s visit to France was met with protests by pockets of the Rwandan diaspora who felt France should avoid legitimising the Rwandan regime, commentators read more to it.

“For Kagame and Rwanda, a future without animosity from France, a country that for better or worse is one of the wealthiest and most influential in the world, cannot be bad for business broadly defined,” said Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Social Research, Makerere University.

“As for the Rwanda government, a constant preoccupation is how to free itself of the domination made possible by unprincipled relationships with big powers. Rwandans leave no one in doubt about wanting to decide how to run their country themselves.”

Ordinarily, BITs also help advance US strategic interests by requiring adoption of market-based economic policies. In exchange, a country signing a BIT with the US is likely to gain greater investments — and the jobs that come with them — than would have been gained had the treaty not been in place.

Only five other sub-Saharan nations have established BITs with the US: Cameroon, the two Congos, Mozambique and Senegal.

Washington is currently exploring such arrangements with Gabon, Ghana, Mauritius and Nigeria and, collectively, with the member states of the East African Community.

The Obama administration regards the Rwandan leader as a force for stability and economic progress in Central and East Africa. Endorsement of the BIT underscores Washington’s willingness to do business with Kagame’s Rwanda.

But the Kagame regime also has critics in the US. Human-rights groups charge that Kagame has sought to silence domestic opponents by brutal means and has generally acted more like an autocrat than a democratic leader.

Opposition groups came out in force in Paris in September to condemn Kagame in similar terms.

He had come to France for only the second time since the 1994 genocide in order to hold talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The trip was viewed as an effort to repair diplomatic relations between the two countries and to encourage French investment in Rwanda.

Ties were snapped in 1996 when a French judge implicated Kagame in the downing of a plane two years earlier that was carrying the then-president of Rwanda, a Hutu. A genocidal rampage against the country’s Tutsi minority then erupted, leading in turn to a insurgent attack by Tutsi forces led by Kagame.

French leaders, on their part, had been incensed by Kagame’s accusations that France was complicit in the genocide that took the lives of some 800,000 Tutsi as well as Hutu who opposed the onslaught.