The Rwandan Government has confirmed it is in talks with Italy about taking in migrants removed from the European Union, though it said no agreement had yet been struck.
Government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said the discussions remained exploratory. “There is no agreement yet. We’re still in discussions,” she told the broadcaster Royal FM on August 6.
Makolo said one idea under consideration was an expansion of the emergency transit mechanism at Gashora, south of Kigali. The centre was created in 2019 with the African Union and the UN refugee agency to shelter people evacuated from detention in Libya.
More than 2,400 asylum seekers have passed through the facility since the scheme began, with most later resettled in third countries. Those housed there are given medical care, psychosocial support and skills training while their cases are assessed.
Makolo said anyone arriving under an Italian arrangement would stay temporarily before returning home voluntarily or being resettled elsewhere. She rejected criticism of such deals, arguing that Rwanda wanted to stop Africans dying in the Sahara and in the Mediterranean.
The confirmation follows reports in the Italian press on August 4 that the Italian Government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is pursuing pilot return hubs in third countries. Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana were named as the states where preliminary contacts have begun.
Unlike the centres Italy runs alone in Albania, the new hubs would be jointly managed by several European governments and financed by the EU. Rome is working with Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands and hopes the first sites will open in 2027.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi set out the plan at an extraordinary meeting of EU interior ministers on August 4, convened after tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
The legal basis is the returns regulation agreed on June 1 and adopted by the European Parliament on June 17, which lets member states send rejected asylum seekers to countries outside the bloc. Kigali was already among a dozen capitals being scouted by EU governments in June.
Rwanda has been at the centre of such schemes before. It signed a migration partnership with the United Kingdom in April 2022 under a Conservative government, though nobody was ever flown out and Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour administration scrapped the plan in 2024.
Kigali is still seeking a further £100 million (€114 million) it says London owes, a claim the British Government denies. In 2025 it agreed to accept up to 250 people deported from the United States.
