Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley where the African Great Lakes region and East Africa converge. It is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The president is Paul Kagame of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, who has served continuously since 2000. Rwanda is one of only three countries in the world with a female majority in the national parliament.
About Rwanda in brief
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley where the African Great Lakes region and East Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet \”land of thousand hills\”, with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the east, with numerous lakes throughout the country. Rwanda has a population of over 12.6 million living on 26,338 km2 of land, and is the most densely populated mainland African country. Christianity is the largest religion in the country; the principal language is Kinyarwanda. The president is Paul Kagame of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, who has served continuously since 2000. Rwanda is one of only three countries in the world with a female majority in the national parliament, the two other countries being Bolivia and Cuba. Tourism is a fast-growing sector and now the country is the country in which gorillas can be visited safely, and for gorilla tracking permits. Traditional arts and crafts are an integral part of Rwandan culture, particularly the highly choreographed intore dance and imigongo, a unique cow-based art form. The country has been governed by a strict administrative hierarchy since precolonial times; there are five provinces delineated by borders drawn in 2006. Rwanda’s developing economy suffered heavily in the wake of the 1994 genocide, but has since strengthened.
The population is young and predominantly rural, with the population drawn from just one cultural and linguistic group, the Banyarwandan, although within this group there are three subgroups: the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The Twa are a forest-dwelling pygmy people and are often considered descendants of Rwanda’s earliest inhabitants. Germany colonised Rwanda in 1884 as part of German East Africa, followed by Belgium, which invaded in 1916 during World War I. The Kingdom of Rwanda dominated from the mid-eighteenth century. The Hutu kings conquered others militarily, centralising power and later enacting anti-Hutu policies. They massacred numerous Tuti and ultimately established an independent, Hutu-dominated republic in 1962. A 1973 military coup saw a change of leadership, but the pro-Tutsi policy remained. The Tutsa-led Rwandan patriotic Front launched a civil war in 1990. The presidents of Rwanda and BurundI, both Hutus, were killed when their aircraft was shot down on 6 April 1994. Social tensions erupted in the1994 genocide that followed, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutu. The RPF ended the genocide with a military victory. Today, Rwanda has low levels of corruption compared with neighbouring countries, although human rights organisations report suppression of opposition groups, intimidation and restrictions on freedom of speech.
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This page is based on the article Rwanda published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
