Rwanda

Rwanda is a small country in Africa.

It has no sea. It has lots of green hills. The capital city is called Kigali.

Rwanda is a small country in east-central Africa, just south of the equator. It has no coast, and it is so hilly that it is often called the land of a thousand hills. Because the land is high, the weather is mild: in Kigali, the capital, the temperature averages about 21 °C all year.

Rwanda has a lot of people for its size, about 14.6 million in 2025, and most of them live in the countryside, in family homes scattered over the hillsides. Kigali, in the middle of the country, is the largest city.

Rwanda is a landlocked country of east-central Africa lying just south of the equator, known in French as le pays des mille collines, the land of a thousand hills. Britannica describes a chain of rugged mountains running north to south along the Congo-Nile divide, highlands of rolling hills and valleys, and a drop from the Virunga volcanoes in the northwest to about 1,220 m in the swampy Kagera valley in the east.

It has one of the highest population densities in sub-Saharan Africa: 14,569,341 people in 2025 (World Bank) on 26,338 km². Yet settlement is dispersed: almost three-fourths of people are rural, living in family compounds scattered on the hillsides. Kigali, only a hamlet at independence in 1962, has grown into the largest city. Rwanda is a multiparty republic; Paul Kagame is president (2026).

Kigali is the biggest city in Rwanda.

At night, its lights twinkle on the hills. In Nyanza there is a huge round house with a grass roof. Kings of Rwanda once lived nearby.

Kigali, the capital, sits in the center of Rwanda on the Ruganwa River. It has grown from a tiny village at independence into the country's biggest city, with minibuses linking it to towns in every direction.

In Nyanza, in the south, the King's Palace Museum shows how Rwanda's kings lived. A palace has been rebuilt as it looked in the 1800s, from traditional materials, and next to it stands a 1931 palace where King Mutara III Rudahigwa lived until 1959. Cows with huge, curving horns, called Inyambo, are kept there too.

Kigali stands in the center of the country on the Ruganwa River; Britannica notes it was only a hamlet at independence but is now the largest city and home to most large industries and the Rwanda Stock Exchange (2008). Minibus routes run from Kigali in all directions, and international airports serve Kigali and Kamembe.

The Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy describes the King's Palace Museum (Rukari) in Nyanza, 88 km from Kigali: the former palace of King Mutara III Rudahigwa became a museum in May 2008. A replica of the 19th-century royal palace has been built entirely from traditional materials, beside the 1931 modern palace where the king lived until his death in 1959, which now presents Rwandan history from the 15th century. Long-horned royal Inyambo cattle, once the king's symbol of prestige, have been kept there since 2011. In 2023 UNESCO inscribed two Rwandan World Heritage Sites: Nyungwe National Park and four memorial sites of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

Rwanda has hills, hills and more hills.

In the north there are tall volcanoes. A big lake called Lake Kivu is in the west. Rain falls in two rainy seasons.

A chain of mountains runs down Rwanda from north to south. In the northwest rise the Virunga volcanoes, and the highest, Karisimbi, is 4,507 meters tall. From there the land drops to swampy river valleys in the east. Lake Kivu lies along the western border, and its waters flow south into Lake Tanganyika.

The middle of Rwanda gets about 1,140 millimeters of rain a year, in two rainy seasons, roughly February to May and October to December. In the southwest, Nyungwe National Park protects a huge mountain rainforest, Rwanda's largest.

Rwanda's backbone is the Congo-Nile divide. Karisimbi, in the Virunga Mountains, reaches 4,507 m; the land falls to about 1,220 m in the Kagera (Akagera) valley, and the Kagera River forms much of the border with Burundi and Tanzania. West of the divide, a low depression runs along Lake Kivu, whose waters empty through the Ruzizi into Lake Tanganyika; most other rivers drain east. Methane gas from Lake Kivu is used for fertilizer and truck fuel.

Average temperatures are mild because of altitude, about 21 °C at Kigali; the volcanic northwest is wetter and cooler. The interior gets about 1,140 mm of rain a year in two rainy seasons. Steep slopes, heavy rain, deforestation and intensive farming cause severe soil erosion. Nyungwe National Park (UNESCO, 2023), almost 102,000 ha of Afromontane forest at 1,480–2,950 m, is the largest remaining montane rainforest in Rwanda and holds 1,468 species of vascular plants.

Mountain gorillas live on Rwanda's volcanoes.

Chimpanzees and monkeys live in the rainforest. Zebras, buffalo and hippos live in a big park. Lions live there too.

High among the Virunga volcanoes, in bamboo forests, live mountain gorillas, protected in Volcanoes National Park. They are Rwanda's most famous animals.

In Nyungwe forest live eastern chimpanzees and golden monkeys, and about one-fifth of all of Africa's primate species. In the east, Akagera National Park has buffalo, zebras, impalas, baboons, warthogs and hippos. Lions were brought back to Akagera in 2015, and black rhinos in 2017 and 2019. Almost 500 kinds of birds have been seen in Akagera.

Britannica calls the mountain gorilla, protected in the bamboo forests of Parc National des Volcans, Rwanda's main tourist attraction. UNESCO records that Nyungwe hosts one of Africa's richest montane-forest primate communities, one-fifth of the continent's primate species, including the globally threatened eastern chimpanzee and golden monkey, an Albertine Rift race of the Angola colobus and l'Hoest's monkey, plus 317 bird species and the critically endangered Hill's horseshoe bat, found only there.

Akagera National Park, established in 1934, is Rwanda's last refuge for savanna-adapted species. Britannica lists buffalo, zebras, impalas, baboons, warthogs and hippos. Managed with African Parks since 2010, it has received lions (2015), eastern black rhinos (2017 and 2019) and southern white rhinos (30 in 2021 and 70 more in June 2025), and almost 500 bird species have been documented. Only a small share of Rwanda is still covered in natural forest.

About 14.6 million people live in Rwanda.

Almost everyone speaks Kinyarwanda. Many people grow beans, bananas and sweet potatoes. Football is the favorite team sport.

About 14.6 million people lived in Rwanda in 2025. Almost everyone speaks Kinyarwanda, and English, French and Swahili are official languages too. Since 2008, English has been the language used for teaching in schools, and Swahili is often spoken in towns.

Most families farm. They grow beans, sorghum, bananas, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes and cassava, and many keep goats, cattle, sheep or pigs. Coffee and tea are grown to sell, and coffee is the country's top export. Football is the most popular team sport, and the National Ballet performs dances based on traditional folk dances.

Britannica names the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa as Rwanda's main groups, together with small numbers of Europeans, Asian merchants and people from neighboring African countries. Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language closely related to Kirundi, is spoken by virtually everyone; English became the language of instruction in 2008, and Swahili is widely used in towns and with neighbors. More than two-fifths of people are Roman Catholic, more than one-third Protestant and more than one-tenth Adventist.

The economy is overwhelmingly agricultural, worked mostly by hand with hoes. Beans, sorghum and corn are harvested at the start of the two dry seasons, while bananas, sweet potatoes and cassava grow all year; bananas also help hold soil on steep slopes. Coffee, introduced by European missionaries, is the prime export, followed by tea. Traditional sports included wrestling, high jumping and archery; football is now the leading team sport, and Rwanda first competed at the Olympics in 1984.