Rwanda
Capital: Kigali · East Africa & Horn
The land of a thousand hills and a centuries-old kingdom whose royal court cultivated intore dance, ubwiiru ritual codes and epic dynastic poetry.
Ethnic communities
- Banyarwanda (Hutu, Tutsi, Twa)A single language and royal tradition across social categories
- TwaForest-descended potters and dancers
More communities of Rwanda
- Banyarwanda (Hutu) · Farming majority within one language and court tradition
- Banyarwanda (Tutsi) · Cattle-lineage families of the old monarchy
- Abanyiginya · The royal dynasty's clan of kings
- Abega · Queen-mother clan of court alliances
- Northern Bakiga-linked folk · Volcano-foothill farmers of Uganda kin
- Intore lineages · Warrior-dance families of the high jumps
- Imandwa ritual houses · Ryangombe cult's initiated keepers
- Kivu fisher villages · Lake communities of singing paddlers
- Muslim quarter families · Swahili-linked traders of Kigali's old wards
- Abagogwe herders · Northwestern pastoral communities
- Returnee diaspora · Families home from generations abroad
Languages
Major languages: Kinyarwanda, English, French, Swahili
Language families: Niger-Congo (Bantu)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Kingdom of Rwanda (Nyiginya dynasty)
Heritage sites
- • Nyanza Royal Palace (Rukari)
- • Genocide memorial sites (UNESCO)
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Rwanda
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Sportb. 1987
Adrien Niyonshuti
Cycling
Survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi who became Rwanda's first Olympic mountain biker and now runs a cycling academy for young riders.
- Science, business & activismb. 1958
Agnes Binagwaho
Paediatrics and health systems
Returned after the genocide against the Tutsi to help rebuild the health system, served as health minister and co-founded the University of Global Health Equity.
- Music & the artsb. 1946
Cécile Kayirebwa
Music
Preserved Rwandan song and dance forms through decades of exile in Belgium and returned to perform them at home after 1994.
- Politics & liberation1911–1959
Mutara III Rudahigwa
Monarchy and reform
Mwami who abolished the ubuhake cattle clientship system and pressed for independence from Belgium.
Deep-dive community profiles
Abagogwe
The cattle-keeping communities of Rwanda's north-western volcanoes — highland Tutsi herders of the Gishwati and Virunga slopes who were among the first killed in 1994 and who have never been counted separately since.
Open deep profile →Abakonde
The lineages of Rwanda's north-west who held land by ubukonde, the right of the first family to clear the forest, a tenure that predated the monarchy, resisted it, and was abolished twice before finally being written out in 2005.
Open deep profile →Bakiga of Rwanda
The mountain farmers of Rwanda's north — terrace builders of the Virunga foothills whose regional identity survived the abolition of ethnicity, and whose distinctiveness from the southern heartland shaped the politics that produced the genocide.
Open deep profile →Banyarwanda
The people of Rwanda — one language, one religion, one culture across Hutu, Tutsi and Twa, whose royal court produced the intricate imigongo art and the towering intore dance, and whose 1994 genocide and its aftermath reshaped the continent's conscience.
Open deep profile →Batwa of Rwanda
Rwanda's first inhabitants — forest hunters turned potters, excluded before the genocide, killed in it in proportions comparable to the Tutsi, and excluded again by a post-genocide policy that has abolished ethnic categories without abolishing their effects.
Open deep profile →Rwandan Returnees
The generation born in exile — Tutsi refugees driven out from 1959 who grew up in Ugandan, Burundian and Congolese camps, built the army that stopped the genocide, came home in 1994 to a country most had never seen, and now govern it.
Open deep profile →The Rwandan clans (Ubwoko)
The eighteen clans that cut across every division Rwanda is known for — Abanyiginya, Abega, Abasinga and the rest, each containing Hutu, Tutsi and Twa alike, and each still named at weddings in a country that has abolished ethnicity by law.
Open deep profile →