Presidents Kagame and Museveni seem to have put past misunderstandings behind them as part of a continued Rwandan rapprochement with its neighbours.

East Africa is awash with speculation about the recent exchange of visits between Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's Paul Kagame.

It began with a rare Museveni visit to Kigali in August 2011. Since then, the two leaders have visited each other no fewer than three times.

President Kagame, with his family in tow, spent Christmas at Museveni's  ranch in Rwakitura, their mutual reverence for the long-horned Ankole cattle providing many photo-ops for the accompanying journalists.

Kagame, whose family fled Rwanda during anti-Tutsi pogroms in 1959, grew up in Uganda and cut his teeth in the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

He and Museveni were collaborators in the guerilla rebellion that Museveni and the NRM waged in the 1980s. It will thus come as a much delayed honour when, as is expected, the NRM honours Kagame during its 26th anniversary celebrations on 26 January.

The two grew distant when Kagame led his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forces into Rwanda in the early 1990s, and dramatically fell out during the battle for Kisangani at the height of the Congolese civil war.

Now, more than a decade on, their rapprochement signals different things to different people. Some see the closeness driven by troubles at home.

Museveni's search for a successor has caused rifts in the NRM. Speculation in Kampala that he wants to install either his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba, his wife Janet or his brother Salim Saleh has caused discontent in the army.

Kagame seems more secure. He has seen the exit of once-close colleagues Patrick Karegeya and General Kayumba Nyamwasa, and there has recently been another shake-up in the armed forces.

Kigali has also been mending fences with the Democratic Republic of Congo and strengthening ties with Kenya. In September last year, Kagame made his first official visit to Paris, signalling that regardless of the controversial history between the two countries, his government was now open for business.

A January 2012 French report investigating  the shooting down of former President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane in 1994 exonerates Kagame and will further strengthen ties.