When you declared that Rwanda's planned Formula 1 race "will never happen" because "the economics simply don't add up," you voiced a familiar scepticism.

A country still building its healthcare and education systems, you argued, has "far more pressing priorities than hosting a billionaires' motorsport spectacle." It is a clean, emotionally resonant argument. It is also incomplete, and coming from someone whose professional life revolves around assessing capital allocation and long-term returns, unexpectedly so.

The opportunity cost is real. Every public franc spent on one project is a franc not spent on another. Rwanda, like any developing nation, faces hard choices. Yet reducing the African Grand Prix, a 10-year agreement announced this week for a purpose-built circuit in Bugesera from the early 2030s, to a zero-sum contest between race tracks and hospitals shows a clear misunderstanding about how modern economic development works and what Rwanda is actually building.

The circuit is not a standalone vanity project. It sits next to the new international airport under construction, designed as part of a wider sports, tourism, entertainment and innovation precinct. The goal is year-round utilisation, skills transfer, local business growth and the creation of a continental motorsport hub. Formula 1 itself frames the deal as more than a race weekend, a long-term partnership aimed at tourism, investment and human capital.

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This is the logic of catalytic infrastructure. Visibility and connectivity are not luxuries; they are multipliers. Countries that have successfully climbed the development ladder understood this. Singapore invested heavily in global branding and world-class facilities long before its per-capita income matched the West. Gulf states used major sporting events to accelerate tourism and diversify economies. East Asian tigers treated infrastructure and international exposure as investments that attracted capital, talent and technology. The returns were rarely immediate, but they compounded.

Rwanda has pursued a similar strategy for more than two decades. From the transformation of Kigali into one of Africa's cleanest and safest cities to its aggressive push into services, ICT and tourism, the country has repeatedly chosen high-ambition projects that signal seriousness to investors. The results are visible in sustained high single-digit to double-digit growth rates in recent years, rising foreign investment interest, and a deliberate repositioning as a conference, aviation and tourism gateway for the region.

Does this mean healthcare and education are secondary? Of course not. Rwanda has expanded access to both dramatically since 2001. The point is that these sectors do not exist in isolation from the broader economy. A larger tax base, more private-sector jobs, higher tourism receipts and stronger technical skills all feed back into the ability to fund better clinics, schools and teacher training. Growth is not the enemy of social spending; it is its most reliable long-term funder.

Critics like you Greg often treat prestige projects as pure consumption, money poured into a weekend of noise and then forgotten. That critique has force when events are poorly planned or capture only temporary spending. It is weaker when the physical asset is multipurpose, co-located with major transport infrastructure, and designed for continuous commercial use. A Grade 1 circuit that hosts other motorsport categories, concerts, exhibitions and training programmes is an industrial asset, not merely a stage for billionaires.

Legitimate risks aside, declaring the project dead on arrival, however, is not analysis. It is a prediction dressed as moral clarity.

The deeper assumption in your post is that developing countries should restrict themselves to "basic" priorities until some undefined threshold of prosperity is reached. History suggests the opposite sequence is more common. Countries invest in the capabilities and visibility that help them generate the resources for broader social progress. Waiting until every hospital and classroom is perfect before pursuing transformative projects is a recipe for permanent underdevelopment.

Whether the economics ultimately "add up" will be judged by the numbers that emerge in the 2030s, attendance, tourism spillover, local employment, skills developed, and private capital crowded in. Those numbers do not yet exist. What does exist is a coherent development thesis, strategically using visibility and high-quality infrastructure to accelerate the very growth that funds healthcare and education at scale.

Dismissing that thesis as a billionaires' distraction may feel righteous to you. But it is not the same as understanding investment.

Formula 1 announcement of the landmark 10-year agreement for Rwanda to host the African Grand Prix starting in the early 2030s generated over 600,000 individual posts and reposts across major social media platforms within its first 24 to 48 hours. I guess that included yours. Merci boucoup.