– A teacher photographs the exam paper minutes after it’s handed out. The image goes to a school librarian, who runs the questions through an AI tool.
– Answers come back, get printed, and are distributed to students still sitting the exam. By the time the exam ends, the cheating is fast enough to be usable within the exam window
That is the latest version of the National Primary Leaving Examination fraud scandal that should worry people most, not because it’s the biggest part of the scheme, but because of what it signals. Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) said this AI-driven operation took place in Nyamasheke District, and it’s the clearest evidence yet that exam fraud in the country has moved past pen-and-paper leaks into something faster and harder to catch.
It’s also just one piece of a much larger case.
RIB has arrested 81 people so far, and on September 5 it paraded 39 of them publicly, among them two sitting vice mayors. The suspects span five districts: Kirehe, Nyamasheke, Ngoma, Kayonza, and Rubavu.
The AI Case
RIB spokesperson Dr. Thierry Murangira said investigators first grew suspicious over something almost mundane: pupils from the same school were turning in answers that were identically worded, down to the same small errors. That kind of uniformity doesn’t happen by accident, it happens when everyone is copying from a single source.
In Nyamasheke, that source was allegedly a machine. A teacher is accused of photographing exam papers before they were even distributed, sending the images to a school librarian, who used AI tools to generate the answers and printed them for distribution.
Murangira said the operation didn’t look improvised, everyone in the chain appeared to know their role in advance, and the scheme may have been running for years before it was caught.
What makes this different from a typical leak is the timeline. Stealing an exam, the traditional way requires advance access and time to work out correct answers. AI collapses that gap, a photo taken after the exam has already started can come back with usable answers before it’s over. That’s a meaningfully different threat than a corrupt invigilator with a memorized answer key, and it’s one Rwanda’s exam authorities are only now confronting.
The Rest of the Ring: Old-Fashioned Corruption, Same Result.
Not every case in this scandal involved technology. Two vice mayors are among the 39 suspects named, Mukanyandwi Janvière of Kirehe, in charge of social affairs, and Muhayeyezu Joseph Désiré of Nyamasheke, in charge of economic development. Their alleged involvement doesn’t appear to touch the AI scheme; Murangira described other parts of the ring as simple, direct interference, officials and invigilators “helping pupils” by handing out answers outright, no technology required.
The group of 39 also includes district education officials, headteachers, teachers, and exam supervisors. Fory- two more suspects remain under investigation.
As of this reporting, neither Kirehe nor Nyamasheke district authorities had issued a public response to the arrests.
The Ministry of Education has addressed the scandal in general terms, without naming these two districts specifically. In an August 30 statement, it said anyone who “organised, facilitated, participated in or deliberately enabled the malpractice would be held accountable.” Education Minister Joseph Nsengimana called it the largest exam malpractice case Rwanda has recorded.
The scale is also why the ministry took an unusual step. Rather than simply cancelling the papers of implicated students, the standard response, it ordered 7,188 learners across 254 exam rooms nationwide to retake the Primary Leaving Examinations, on the reasoning that students shouldn’t lose their year over cheating that adults, not children, had engineered.
The scandal lands awkwardly for Kirehe District. When 2024/25 results were announced on August 20, 2025, Kirehe posted the country’s best PLE pass rate, 93.1 percent, and the ministry celebrated it publicly, giving top students laptops, and school supplies while Umwalimu Sacco covered their school fees for the year, according to Rwanda Dispatch’s coverage at the time.
That figure comes from a different exam cycle than the one under investigation now, and it isn’t part of the fraud allegations itself. But Kirehe went on to repeat as the country’s top-performing district in the 2025/26 cycle, the very results now under scrutiny, with a vice mayor from that same district among those facing prosecution.
RIB says the investigation is ongoing. Those already named face potential prosecution on corruption-related charges, abuse of office, breach of professional secrecy, forgery and falsification of documents, carrying sentences of one to ten years, plus fines, depending on the offense.
