Rwanda
The land of a thousand hills, remade after catastrophe
Rwanda is a small, mountainous country in the heart of the Great Lakes region, known as the land of a thousand hills for the endless ridges that ripple across its terrain. It carries one of the twentieth century's darkest memories, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, yet in the decades since it has transformed itself into one of Africa's cleanest, safest, and most efficiently governed states, often called the Singapore of Africa. Densely populated and intensely cultivated, Rwanda is also a refuge for some of the last mountain gorillas, drawing travelers to the misted volcanoes of its north.
The country sits astride the watershed between the Nile and Congo basins on the eastern edge of the Albertine Rift. Its western border runs along Lake Kivu, one of the deep Great Lakes, while the northwest is crowned by the Virunga volcanoes, including Mount Karisimbi at 4,507 meters, the highest point. The rest of the land is a tapestry of steep, terraced hills and wetland valleys at high elevation, giving Rwanda a temperate climate despite lying just south of the equator. Two rainy seasons sustain the smallholder farming, tea, and coffee that cover nearly every cultivable slope.
Once a centralized kingdom of intertwined Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa communities, Rwanda was colonized by Germany and then Belgium, whose policies hardened ethnic divisions. Independence in 1962 was followed by waves of violence that culminated in 1994, when roughly 800,000 people were killed in about a hundred days. The Rwandan Patriotic Front halted the genocide and has governed since, presiding over a remarkable economic recovery, near-universal health coverage, and one of the world's highest shares of women in parliament, even as critics point to tight political control. Kinyarwanda is universal, and English, French, and Swahili are also official.