[1] Kagame was born in Kiyanza - Buliza Rwanda, in actual Murambi Sector, Rulindo District, Northern Province, to a long line of court historians.
His family had high status in the kingdom of Rwanda, being of the ruling Tutsi class, and also belonging to a group called Abiru, the traditional ministers in the court of the Mwami.
A turning point came in 1952, when he wrote Le Code des Institutions Politiques de Rwanda (in support of his friend King Mutara III Rudahigwa), which was a defense of the Rwandan system of rule by clientage.
The colonial regime, which was trying to break up Rwandans' linkages through clientage, found this threatening to their efforts to control the kingdom and pressured his bishop into reposting him to Rome.
[2] After returning to Rwanda in 1958 he became a teacher at the Catholic seminary and a prominent member of the independence movement which, despite his identification with the Tutsi monarchy, may have saved him during the Belgian-led Hutu uprising in 1959.
Alexis Kagame is a first cousin once removed of Landoald Ndasingwa and his sister Louise Mushikiwabo who describes him as a very tall, massive jolly man with a big sense of humor, despite his critical inclinations.
Subsequent academic research largely disproved the Kagame-Maquet depiction of an idyllic pre-colonial society by taking into account the degrading uburetwa land contract.
[8] Kagame's depiction of a stable, socially progressive nation, as well as his maps showing expansive territorial influence, were used by the Rwandan Patriotic Front in the late 1990s to justify their rule and invasion of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.