Raffles Family Office hires former Rwandan minister Jean de Dieu Uwihanganye to court wealthy Africans

Raffles Family Office, a Hong Kong-based firm that manages money for wealthy families across Asia, has hired Jean de Dieu Uwihanganye, a former Rwandan cabinet minister and ambassador, to lead its expansion into Africa.

Uwihanganye joins as principal, emerging markets and business development, with a brief covering what the firm calls the Africa-Asia investment corridor, according to a statement issued in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Sept. 8. He is based in Hong Kong and reports to group chief executive Chi Man Kwan, Asian Private Banker reported.

The appointment gives an Asian wealth manager a senior figure with direct access to African governments and business networks, at a point when both Hong Kong and Singapore are competing aggressively for family office business.

Who Uwihanganye is

Uwihanganye, 39, was born in Gatsibo in eastern Rwanda in January 1987. He trained as a civil engineer at the National University of Rwanda, took a master's degree in the management of construction projects at the University of Manchester, and later completed an MBA at Nanyang Business School in Singapore. He is a chartered engineer. Earlier in his career he worked as a journalist at Radio Salus, a station attached to what is now the University of Rwanda, and later as director of business planning and development at NPD Ltd, a Rwandan construction company.

President Paul Kagame appointed him minister of state for transport in the Ministry of Infrastructure in August 2017, when he was 30. He left that post in July 2019 to become Rwanda's high commissioner to Singapore, a role that also covered Australia, New Zealand and Brunei, and he was additionally accredited as ambassador to Indonesia from May 2023. He served as dean of the African Group of Ambassadors in Singapore, a rotating position in which he represented the diplomatic missions of African states to the business community across the Asia-Pacific region.

Kagame brought him back into cabinet as minister of state for infrastructure in 2025, in a reshuffle that followed the appointment of Justin Nsengiyumva as prime minister. That was his most recent government role before the move to Raffles.

The firm said in its statement that the Inclusive FinTech Forum, an annual finance and technology conference held in Kigali, was conceived and launched during his time as a diplomat. Raffles described it as Africa's largest event of its kind.

What Raffles Family Office does

A multi-family office is a firm that manages the wealth of several unrelated rich families at once, handling investments, tax, succession planning and the paperwork that follows large fortunes. It differs from a single family office, which serves one family, and from a private bank, in that it does not hold client money on its own balance sheet and instead places assets with custodian banks and brokers.

Raffles Family Office was founded in Hong Kong in 2016 by Chi Man Kwan and Ray Tam. It grew out of Raffles Capital Holdings, which Kwan set up in December 2014 after a career in private banking at BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered. The firm now operates from dual headquarters in Hong Kong and Singapore, with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei and Bangkok. Its services run from discretionary asset management to insurance broking, property, trusts, corporate services and immigration advice, aimed at ultra-high net worth individuals, a category the industry generally applies to people with more than $30 million in investable assets.

The firm does not publish a current assets under management figure. Kwan told the trade publication finews.asia in 2019 that it managed about $2 billion and was aiming for $10 billion. In 2022 the firm launched Revo Digital Family Office, a separate unit for clients holding cryptocurrency and other digital assets, which Tam runs as chief executive.

Kwan is also the founder and chairman of the Family Office Association Hong Kong, an industry body that lobbies the territory's government and regulators, and president of the Hong Kong-Singapore Business Association. Raffles describes itself as Asia's leading multi-family office, a characterisation the firm makes about itself rather than one drawn from independent ranking data.

Why the corridor matters

Hong Kong and Singapore have spent the past five years courting family offices with tax breaks and residency schemes. Hong Kong has extended its preferential tax regime for single family offices and revived its capital investment entrant scheme, which grants residency in exchange for investment. Singapore built its variable capital company structure to attract funds redomiciling from the Cayman Islands, Mauritius and Luxembourg. Kwan has said publicly that wealthy families from the Greater Bay Area accelerated their move into Hong Kong structures after the city reopened following the pandemic.

Africa has been a marginal part of that story. African families with substantial wealth have historically looked to London, Geneva, Dubai and Mauritius rather than to East Asia, and Asian capital going into Africa has been dominated by state-linked Chinese lending and corporate investment rather than by private wealth. Uwihanganye's mandate sits precisely in that gap, and his six years as Rwanda's envoy in Singapore mean he arrives with the relationships on both sides already built.

Rwanda has its own stake in the outcome. The government has spent a decade positioning Kigali as a financial centre, most visibly through the Kigali International Financial Centre, and has courted Singapore in particular as a model and a partner in fintech, education and infrastructure. Uwihanganye was the official who ran much of that engagement.