34 Facts About Rwanda

Population is young and predominantly rural; Rwanda has one of the youngest populations in the world, with the average age being 19 years.

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.

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.

The Kingdom of Rwanda dominated from the mid-eighteenth century, with the Tutsi kings conquering others militarily, centralising power and later enacting anti-Hutu policies.

Rwanda's developing economy suffered heavily in the wake of the 1994 genocide, but has since strengthened.

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Rwanda is one of only two countries in which mountain gorillas can be visited safely, and visitors pay high prices for gorilla tracking permits.

Term 'Rwanda' is a name for indigenous people there, whose word for themselves is of unknown origin, emerged as the most commonly recognised spelling.

Rwanda'storians have several theories regarding the nature of the Bantu migrations; one theory is that the first settlers were Hutu, while the Tutsi migrated later to form a distinct racial group, possibly of Nilo-hamitic origin.

One of these, the Kingdom of Rwanda, ruled by the Tutsi Nyiginya clan, became increasingly dominant from the mid-eighteenth century.

Rwanda was separated from Burundi and gained independence on 1 July 1962, which is commemorated as Independence Day, a national holiday.

President of Rwanda is the head of state, and has broad powers including creating policy in conjunction with the Cabinet of Rwanda, exercising the prerogative of mercy, commanding the armed forces, negotiating and ratifying treaties, signing presidential orders, and declaring war or a state of emergency.

Rwanda has low corruption levels relative to most other African countries; in 2014, Transparency International ranked Rwanda as the fifth cleanest out of 47 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and 55th cleanest out of 175 in the world.

Rwanda is a member of the United Nations, African Union, Francophonie, East African Community, and the Commonwealth of Nations.

Under the RPF government, however, Rwanda has sought closer ties with neighbouring countries in the East African Community and with the English-speaking world.

Relations soured further in 2012, as Kinshasa accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebellion, an insurgency in the eastern Congo.

At 26, 338 square kilometres, Rwanda is the world's 149th-largest country, and the fourth smallest on the African mainland after Gambia, Eswatini, and Djibouti.

Rwanda has a temperate tropical highland climate, with lower temperatures than are typical for equatorial countries because of its high elevation.

Rwanda contains three terrestrial ecoregions: Albertine Rift montane forests, Victoria Basin forest-savanna mosaic, and Ruwenzori-Virunga montane moorlands.

Rwanda's economy suffered heavily during the 1994 genocide, with widespread loss of life, failure to maintain infrastructure, looting, and neglect of important cash crops.

Rwanda joined the East African Community in 2007, and has ratified a plan for monetary union amongst the seven member nations, which could eventually lead to a common East African shilling.

Rwanda is a country of few natural resources, and the economy is based mostly on subsistence agriculture by local farmers using simple tools.

Animals raised in Rwanda include cows, goats, sheep, pigs, chicken, and rabbits, with geographical variation in the numbers of each.

The largest contributor to this revenue was mountain gorilla tracking, in the Volcanoes National Park; Rwanda is one of only three countries in which mountain gorillas can be visited safely; the gorillas attract thousands of visitors per year, who are prepared to pay high prices for permits.

Rwanda was acquired in 2013 by Liquid Telecom, a company providing telecommunications and fibre optic networks across eastern and southern Africa.

MTN Rwanda is the leading provider, with 3, 957, 986 subscribers, followed by Tigo with 2, 887, 328, and Bharti Airtel with 1, 336, 679.

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Rwanda is linked by road to other countries in the East African Community, namely Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya, as well as to the eastern Congolese cities of Goma and Bukavu; the country's most important trade route is the road to the port of Mombasa via Kampala and Nairobi, which is known as the Northern Corridor.

Rwanda has been a unified state since pre-colonial times, and the population is drawn from just one cultural and linguistic group, the Banyarwanda; this contrasts with most modern African states, whose borders were drawn by colonial powers and did not correspond to ethnic boundaries or pre-colonial kingdoms.

In 2013, the public University of Rwanda was created out of a merger of the former National University of Rwanda and the country's other public higher education institutions.

Quality of healthcare in Rwanda has historically been very low, both before and immediately after the 1994 genocide.

In recent years Rwanda has seen improvement on a number of key health indicators.

Rwanda has a shortage of medical professionals, with only 0.

Largest faith in Rwanda is Catholic Christianity, but there have been significant changes in the nation's religious demographics since the genocide, with many conversions to evangelical Christianity, and, to a lesser degree, Islam.

Cuisine of Rwanda is based on local staple foods produced by subsistence agriculture such as bananas, plantains, pulses, sweet potatoes, beans, and cassava (manioc).

The most popular sports in Rwanda are association football, volleyball, basketball, athletics and Paralympic sports.