Country profilesRwanda

Country snapshot

For a country that went through the horrors of genocide as recently as 1994, Rwanda has come a long way, but the wounds will take decades to heal. Today Hutus - four fifths of the population - and Tutsis live together again, by and large in peace, in Africa’s most densely populated country. Reconciliation efforts continue, education is improving and reforms have opened up the agriculture-based economy to foreign investment. However, there are increasing concerns that political repression is turning Rwanda into a de facto one-party state. The transition from a traumatised to a relatively stable nation has been steered by President Paul Kagame, the former Tutsi rebel leader whose forces drove genocidal Hutu forces out of the country in 1994, bringing an end to the killing. Rwanda has an excellent record of economic development and anti-corruption initiatives. However, the cost of this appears to be worsening civil and political freedoms.

Government

A government of national unity was formed after the 1994 civil war. Today, Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is firmly in the driving seat. Kagame has been president since 2000, and is undoubtedly the man who runs the country. In 2010, he was re-elected for a second and final seven year term. There is an 80-seat Chamber of Deputies and 26-member Senate. The Chamber of Deputies sits for five years - 53 seats are elected directly, 24 are reserved for women elected by local bodies, and three are chosen by youth and disability groups. Rwanda was the first country in the world to elect more women than men as MPs.

Economy

Rwanda is crowded, poor and a major recipient of foreign aid. Some 85 percent of its people depend on small-scale agriculture. While soils are fertile, high population density means food has to be imported, creating a trade deficit.
The average annual income per person is just over $400 - little more than a dollar a day - and most people live below the national poverty line, calculated at around 40 U.S. cents a day.

The 1994 genocide and civil war almost halved the size of the economy. The government is working to rebuild Rwanda as an attractive destination for foreign investors and tourists, for whom mountain gorillas are a big draw. It plans to become an IT hub and a middle income country by 2020. The World Bank says Rwanda has made remarkable progress, maintaining economic stability and implementing extensive reforms that have contributed to solid growth.

Tea and coffee were the main foreign exchange earners until 2008 when exports of industrial minerals overtook them. Rwanda has joined the East African Community, which includes its big regional partners Kenya and Uganda, and has introduced market-focused reforms. But it is hampered by instability in neighbouring countries, poor infrastructure and weather fluctuations that often hit crops. Its main trading partners are Kenya, Uganda, former colonial powers Germany and Belgium, and China.

Rwanda has privatised key national businesses including phone company Rwandatel, large tea estates and banks.

History

Rwanda, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, has become a byword for genocide and the international community's failure to stop it.

In the 1300s, Tutsis migrated into what is now Rwanda, where the Twa (pygmy) and Hutu peoples were living. They came to control the area as the dominant caste under a feudal system based on cattle-holding. In the colonial scramble for Africa, Rwanda was ruled by Germany for a quarter century. It was given to Belgium after World War One by the League of Nations.  Hutus started to demand a bigger say in the late 1950s, deposing the Tutsi king. Thousands of Tutsis - including Paul Kagame's parents - fled to Uganda amid ethnic violence. More Tutsis left after Rwanda became independent in 1962 under a Hutu president.

In 1990, the mainly Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded from Uganda, calling for an end to the one-party state, democracy and a better deal for Tutsis. Their gains led to a power-sharing deal in 1993 that was meant to end the conflict and establish a U.N. peacekeeping force.

In April 1994, however, President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart died when their plane was shot down over Kigali. This acted as the spark for the genocide, which was meticulously planned. An extremist Hutu militia called the Interahamwe and elements of the Hutu-led Rwandan military began systematically massacring Tutsis, with ordinary citizens urged to kill their neighbours by local officials and messages over government-sponsored radio.

In 100 days, around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, many of them hacked to death with machetes.

The RPF launched a major offensive and took the capital. Hutu militias fled west to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, taking with them around 2 million Hutu refugees who settled in camps near the border controlled by the armed groups. In 1996, the RPF invaded the camps and drove home the refugees.

In 2000, Rwanda's Hutu President Pasteur Bizimungu resigned, accusing parliament of targeting Hutu politicians in anti-corruption investigations. Kagame succeeded him in a vote by MPs. Bizimungu later served three years in jail for embezzlement.

The justice system was overwhelmed by trials of genocide suspects. A U.N. tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, dealt only with the biggest cases, but tens of thousands of other suspects crowded the jails. In 2001, traditional "gacaca" courts were set up in which ordinary Rwandans judged their peers, to try to clear the backlog of cases.  In 2003, Kagame won the presidential poll with 95 percent of the vote.

Ties with Paris were frozen in 2004 when Kagame rejected a French report claiming he had ordered the 1994 attack on the plane which killed the Rwandan and Burundian presidents. Rwanda accused France of having armed Hutu extremists.
Diplomatic ties were restored in 2009 after a three-year break, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited in 2010 to mark the reconciliation.

In the 2010 elections, Kagame won 93 percent of the vote. There were concerns this was partly due to a climate of fear, following the beheading of an opposition of an opposition official, the shooting of a dissident Rwandan general in South Africa, the killing of a critical journalist and the arrest of two presidential aspirants. Rights groups say anti-genocide legislation has been misused to ban critical newspapers and prevent the registration of opposition parties.

Legal snapshot

Rwanda's legal system is based on German and Belgian civil law, as well as customary law. However, Rwanda intends to introduce elements of Britain's common law since joining the Commonwealth in 2009 - aimed at greater harmony with the legal systems used in former British colonies in the East African Community.

The Supreme Court can review legislation. The country has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction, and does not recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court.

In an effort to cope with the surge in demand on its judicial system after the genocide, Rwanda set up "gacaca" community courts in 2001 to try suspects.

A special U.N. International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, handles cases involving the big fish, especially those accused of orchestrating the slaughter. There have been several convictions.

Rwanda ranks around the middle of Transparency International's annual index measuring the perceived level of public-sector corruption, suggesting it is regarded as one of Africa's least corrupt nations.

The World Bank says the country is trying to put in place sound economic governance, including independent regulatory and audit agencies, and a strong focus on anti-corruption. However, nepotism is an issue, with parts of the banking, tea plantation, coffee, tobacco and mineral exporting businesses in the hands of people close to Kagame and the RPF elite.