In 2025, I was invited to perform at the Ubumuntu Arts Festival. My first visit to Rwanda, I spent the lead-up to my trip trawling the Internet for information to customise my own travel brochure. Capitalising on my new browsing habits, internet algorithms began pushing a glut of Rwandese TikTokers and Youtubers to me. Of these influencers, Naomie Nishimwe stood out to me. A slender, gap-toothed, extroverted beauty, she had been crowned Miss Rwanda 2020, and hosted a YouTube channel filled with travel vlogs and story-time videos. Fascinated, I watched, liked and subscribed.
Post-trip, my priorities shifted and as I formed new digital habits, I forgot all about Nishimwe until a few weeks ago when my push recommendations informed me about her recently published memoir. Intrigued, I added it to my reading list.
What motivates the memoirist? For Chilean-American writer, Isabel Allende, who has authored five of them, the memoir is “an exercise in truth”, referring to how the art form serves as an opportunity for self reflection. “In memoir”, she adds, “feelings are more important than facts.”
More Than A Crown offers a blend of both. Born in Kigali in 1999, Nishimwe is a member of the ‘Generation After’ — young Rwandans fortunate to not have witnessed the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but nonetheless shaped by its trauma. Her early childhood was marked by separation from her father, whose job as a member of the Rwandan Defence Force entails, ironically, reuniting families separated by the nation’s civil war. With limited resources, the family relies on prayers, which appear to be answered via the kindness of neighbours and the generosity of relatives abroad. At primary school, sited at a former battlefield still ridden with active landmines, she struggles with undiagnosed learning difficulties as the strict teachers crush her self-confidence.
In popular media, such struggles are character-building for latter glory, and true to script, serendipity soon visits Nishimwe. A viral Tiktok video leads to fronting an MTN campaign, then comes the Miss Rwanda title, which she leverages into a career as an influencer. She enjoys red carpets and corporate sponsorships, and her livestreamed wedding video attracts over a million views yet the storybook existence the audience glimpses is an incomplete picture.
Written in a chatty style, Nishimwe’s emotional highs and lows are palpable. We feel the excitement of meeting President Paul and First Lady Jeannette Kagame, and the thrills of romantic vacations in Dubai and Zanzibar as keenly as her frustration when her pageant stipends are delayed and depression in the onslaught of cyber bullying. Her crown may be glittery, but she staggers under its weight.
Nishimwe takes particular umbrage at those who exhibit a sense of entitlement towards her. She chafes at the online spectators who dissect her interactions and relationship dynamics, distorting intent in the process, and offering unsolicited opinions. Keen to credit her success to hard work and professionalism, she fails to understand that the para-social rapport between her and the public is what makes her genre of content creation possible in the first place.
Her convictions are strongest when advocating for mental health awareness — her Miss Rwanda project. Although her insights are limited to pop psychology talking points, this appears to be her true calling and were she to imitate the legendary American supermodel Christy Turlington Burns in earning the requisite educational qualifications, there is little doubt she would make meaningful impact in the public health sphere.
Enlivened by glossy photo inserts, this celebrity memoir is an enjoyable read, however on reaching the final chapter where the author boasts about negotiating a 5 million RWF sponsorship fee and announces her new management structure, suspicions about the project’s true intent emerge. Could this be part of a brand repositioning campaign?
Given the precarious nature of the attention economy, leveraging traditional media makes perfect marketing sense. Couching her book in the language of vulnerability endears her to her established fan base while provoking interest in an untapped audience. In addition, transitioning to ‘author’ increases the former beauty queen’s cultural capital and elevates her status.
A coup for Brand Naomie.
BIO: Akumbu Uche is a writer and storyteller from Nigeria. Her works have been published by thelagosreview.ng, Aké Review, Brittle Paper, Canthius, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere.
