Rwanda is officially the Republic of Rwanda, a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes area as well as East Africa merge. Located a few degrees southern of the Equator, Rwanda is surrounded by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is extremely elevated, offering it the soubriquet “land of a thousand hillsides”, with its location controlled by mountains in the west and also savanna to the east, with numerous lakes throughout the nation. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy periods as well as two completely dry periods each year.

Rwanda has a population of over 12.6 million living on 26,338 km2 (10,169 sq mi) of land, as well as is one of the most densely inhabited mainland African country; among nations larger than 10,000 km2, it is the 5th most densely inhabited nation worldwide. One million people reside in the capital and biggest city Kigali.

The population is young and also mostly country; Rwanda has one of the youngest populations on the planet, with the ordinary age being 19 years. Rwandans are drawn from simply one cultural as well as linguistic group, the Banyarwanda. Nonetheless, within this group there are 3 subgroups: the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The Twa are a forest-dwelling pygmy people as well as are typically considered descendants of Rwanda’s earliest inhabitants.

Scholars disagree on the origins of as well as distinctions between the Hutu as well as Tutsi; some believe distinctions are derived from former social castes within a solitary people, while others think the Hutu and also Tutsi showed up in the nation separately, and also from different locations. Christianity is the largest faith in the nation; the primary language is Kinyarwanda, talked by the majority of Rwandans, with English as well as French acting as additional official languages.

The sovereign state of Rwanda has a governmental system of federal government. The president is Paul Kagame of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), that has actually served constantly considering that 2000. Today, Rwanda has reduced degrees of corruption compared with adjoining countries, although human rights organisations report suppression of opposition teams, intimidation and constraints on freedom of expression.

The nation has been controlled by a strict administrative pecking order given that precolonial times; there are 5 districts marked by boundaries pulled in 2006. Rwanda is one of just 3 nations worldwide with a women majority in the nationwide parliament, the two various other countries being Bolivia and also Cuba.

Hunter-gatherers worked out the territory in the Stone as well as Iron Ages, adhered to later by Bantu peoples. The populace coalesced initially right into clans and then right into kingdoms. The Kingdom of Rwanda dominated from the mid-eighteenth century, with the Tutsi kings overcoming others militarily, centralising power as well as later enacting anti-Hutu plans.

Germany colonized Rwanda in 1884 as part of German East Africa, complied with by Belgium, which invaded in 1916 throughout World War I. Both European countries ruled with the kings and bolstered a pro-Tutsi plan. The Hutu populace rebelled in 1959. They massacred countless Tutsi and also ultimately developed an independent, Hutu-dominated republic in 1962 led by Head of state Grégoire Kayibanda.

A 1973 military coup overthrew Kayibanda and also brought Juvénal Habyarimana to power, who kept the pro-Hutu policy. The Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front introduced a civil battle in 1990. Habyarimana was executed in April 1994. Social stress appeared in the Rwandan genocide that followed, in which Hutu extremists eliminated an estimated 500,000– 1,000,000 Tutsi and also Hutu in the span of one hundred days. The RPF ended the genocide with a military success in July 1994.