When Paul Kagame was only two years old, the Tutsi political dominance ended in Rwanda, so, his family fled to Uganda where he spent the rest of his childhood.
Hutu activists began killing Tutsi, forcing more than 100,000 to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.
Kagame's family abandoned their home, living for two years in the far north-east of Rwanda and eventually crossing the border into Uganda.
They moved gradually north, and settled in the Nshungerezi refugee camp in the Toro sub-region in Uganda early in 1962.
Kagame began his primary education in a school near the refugee camp, where he and other Rwandan refugees learned 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, graduating with the best grades in the district. He subsequently attended Ntare School- one of the best schools in Uganda, where Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni also studied.
The death of Kagame's father in the early 1970s, and the departure of his best friend 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 without distinction at Old Kampala Secondary School
In the 1980s, Kagame fought in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army, becoming a senior Ugandan army officer after Museveni's military victories carried him to the Ugandan presidency.
Following Amin's defeat, and inspired by Rwigyema, Kagame and other Rwandan refugees pledged allegiance to Museveni, who was a cabinet member in the transition government.
Kagame travelled to Tanzania where the Tanzanian government, which sought to protect the new Ugandan regime, trained him in espionage.
In 1981, Museveni formed the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA); Kagame and Rwigyema joined as founding soldiers, along with thirty eight Ugandans. The army's goal was to overthrow Obote's government, in what became known as the Ugandan Bush War
Kagame and Rwigyema joined the NRA primarily to ease conditions for Rwandan refugees persecuted by Obote. However, they also had a long term goal of returning with other Tutsi refugees to Rwanda; military experience would enable them to potentially fight the Hutu-dominated Rwandan army.
In the NRA, Kagame specialised in intelligence gathering and he rose to a position close to Museveni. The NRA, based in the Luwero Triangle, fought the Ugandan army for the next five years and continued the war despite Obote's deposition in a 1985 coup d'état and subsequent peace talks
In 1986, the NRA captured Kampala with a force of 14,000 soldiers, including 500 Rwandans, and formed a new government.
After Museveni's inauguration as president, he appointed Kagame and Rwigyema as senior officers in the new Ugandan army; Kagame was the head of military intelligence.
As well as fulfilling their army duties, Kagame and Rwigyema began building a covert network of Rwandan Tutsi refugees within the army's ranks, intended as the nucleus for a putative attack on Rwanda.
In 1989 Rwanda's President Habyarimana and many Ugandans in the army began to criticise Museveni over his appointment of Rwandan refugees to senior positions, which led him to demote Kagame and Rwigyema.
They remained de facto senior officers, but the change caused them to accelerate their plans to invade Rwanda.
They joined an organisation called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a refugee association which had been operating under various names since 1979
Marriage
Kagame married Jeannette Nyiramongi, a Tutsi exile living in Nairobi, Kenya, in Uganda on 10 June 1989