By Olive Musoni

Olive lives in the Kanyozo district in Rwanda. She is involved in evangelism in her home congregation and has a heart for her nation.

Photo Album Rwanda

                             Background

In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Since then, most of the refugees have returned to Rwanda, but several thousand remained in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; the former Zaire) and formed an extremist insurgency bent on retaking Rwanda, much as the RPF tried in 1990. Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 and its first post-genocide presidential and legislative elections in August and September 2003 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output, and ethnic reconciliation is complicated by the real and perceived Tutsi political dominance. Kigali's increasing centralization and intolerance of dissent, the nagging Hutu extremist insurgency across the border, and Rwandan involvement in two wars in recent years in the neighboring DRC continue to hinder Rwanda's efforts to escape its bloody legacy.

[ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html ]

Religion

Most Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda. Before the arrival of European colonists, there was no written history. Today, the nation is roughly 84% Hutu, 15% Tutsi, and 1% Twa, with smaller minorities of South Asians, Arabs, French, British, and Belgians. The nation is some 56.5% Roman Catholic, 26% Protestant, 11.1% Adventist, and 4.6% Muslim, original beliefs 0.1%, none 1.7% (2001).

[ [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/rw.html Rwandan Religion Statistics at CIA-The World Factbook] ]

However, the current percentage for the Muslim population is believed to be around at 14%. This is after the rush of conversions to Islam in the decade following the genocide. The tiny Muslim community at the time of the genocide had played a vital role in saving countless Christian Tutsis from the Christian Hutus.

These converts have their own reasons for converting to Islam - some wanted to honor those who had saved them or their family members, some were introduced to Islam during their stay with their protectors, others chose Islam as another alternative because they simply could not go back to the Catholic Church which is seen as having played a critical role in aiding the perpetrators of the genocide, and a fraction converted because they realised that Muslim Tutsis did not die in the genocide since Muslim Hutus had refused to be swept away by Hutu hatred

[url = http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53018-2002Sep22.html ]

Economy

Rwanda is a poor rural country with about 90% of the population engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture. It is the most densely populated country in Africa and is landlocked with few natural resources and minimal industry. Primary foreign exchange earners are coffee and tea. The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda's fragile economic base, severely impoverished the population, particularly women, and eroded the country's ability to attract private and external investment. However, Rwanda has made substantial progress in stabilizing and rehabilitating its economy to pre-1994 levels, although poverty levels are higher now. GDP has rebounded and inflation has been curbed. Despite Rwanda's fertile ecosystem, food production often does not keep pace with population growth, requiring food imports. Rwanda continues to receive substantial aid money and obtained IMF-World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative debt relief in 2005-06. Rwanda also received Millennium Challenge Account Threshold status in 2006. The government has embraced an expansionary fiscal policy to reduce poverty by improving education, infrastructure, and foreign and domestic investment and pursuing market-oriented reforms, although energy shortages, instability in neighboring states, and lack of adequate transportation linkages to other countries continue to handicap growth.

[ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html ]

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