The principal mineral resources are cassiterite (tin ore), wolframite (tungsten ore), columbite, tantalite, beryl, and gold.  Large natural-gas reserves, found near the DRC border, are being developed.   

The population of Rwanda is 94 percent rural.  Most of the people live in family groups dispersed throughout mountainous regions.  Three ethnic groups make up the population: the Hutu (about 90%); the Tutsi (9%), noted as cattle raisers; and the Twa (1%), a pygmoid people thought to be the original inhabitants of the region.  The official languages are Kinyarwanda (a Bantu language) and French.  About 65 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, about 9 percent is Muslim, and some 9 percent is Protestant.  Approximately 17 percent of the people follow traditional religions.  

Population Characteristic  

Rwanda is divided into ten prefectures, each of which is administered by a prefect who is appointed by the president.  The principal cities are Kigali, the capital, with a population (1990 estimate) of 219,000, and Butare (1978) 21,691.  

Most Rwandans live in round grass huts on farms scattered over the country’s many hills.  Family life is central to society.  Traditionally, the principal goal in life was parenthood.  Women generally dress in brightly colored wraps, men in white.  However, many have adopted Western clothes.  The Rwandan diet consists mainly of sweet potatoes and beans, with bananas, corn, peas, millet, and fruits added in season.  Beer and milk are important beverages.  Protein deficiency is a serious problem.  Cattle are herded as signs of wealth and status rather than for their value as food.  Most Rwandans consume meat only about once or twice a month.  Fish is eaten by those living near lakes.  Pastimes include poetry recitation, storytelling, and mancala, a board game common throughout Africa.  Soccer is also popular.

The richness of Rwandan culture is apparent in the wide range of fine crafts.  These include pottery, basketry, painting, jewelry, wood carving, metal work, and the making of gourd containers.  All ethnic groups cherish oral traditions of proverbs, songs and chants.  The Tutsi, in particular, are known for their epic songs and dynastic poetry chronicling the origins of the Tutsi ruling class.  The verse, strongly flavored with traditional mythology, has preserved Rwandan history orally through generations of preliterate peoples.  For many years, the tall, splendidly adorned all-male Tutsi intore dancers, characterized by coordinated drilling dances reflecting the warrior tradition of the Tutsi, and the tambourinaires (drummers), were attractions for travelers.  Rwanda has produced a number of writers, including Alexis Kagame and J. Saverio Nayigiziki, both of whom have written primarily in French.  French is the main literary language in Rwanda because the educated elite of the country are educated largely in French.  Kagame’s and Nayigiziki’s main theme include religion and the conflict between tradition and modernity.

Ethnic division and rivalry have been the dominant features of Rwandan society since independence in 1962.  These severe problems are compounded further by poverty, overcrowding, environmental stress, and one of the highest incidences of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the world. 

Minerals are Rwanda’s second most important source of foreign exchange after agricultural products.  However, due to drops in world commodity prices, the mining of cassiterite was halted in 1986.  The following year the country’s wolframite mines were also closed for the same reason.  By 1991 some cassiterite and other mineral ores were being exported again, but, only in very modest amounts.  Cassiterite, gold, and beryl mining were disrupted by the instability of the mid-1990s. 

The currency is the Rwanda franc, consisting of 100 centimes (about 304.3 Rwanda francs = US $1; 1996).  The National Bank of Rwanda (1964) is the issuing bank.  The chief exports, coffee and tea, are shipped primarily to Germany and other European countries.  Motor vehicles, fuels, textiles, and machinery are imported mainly from Belgium, Kenya, France and Germany.  Annual exports earned about $81.8 million in 1991, while imports cost $262.8 million.  Trade virtually ceased during 1994 and has been recovering very slowly since.

Prior to August 1994, the basic administrative unit of Rwanda was the commune, run by an elected council and presided over by a mayor chosen by the council.  Some 145 communes were formed.  Since the disruptions of 1994, local government has been superseded by martial law. 

Until the disruptions of 1994, Rwanda’s judiciary system was based on Belgian and German codes and customary law.  The main courts of Rwanda were the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation, courts of appeals, courts of the first instance, and provincial courts.  A court of accounts was responsible for examining public accounts.   However, Rwandan courts ceased functioning in April 1994, and the structure of the judiciary system may take years to rebuild.

In 1962, a social security program providing old-age benefits and workers’ compensation was inaugurated, but has proved ineffective.  A government assisted program provides community centers and health services.  Trypanosomiasis, malaria, schistosomiasis, and sexually transmitted diseases are all severe medical problems in Rwanda.  However, AIDS is by far the most serious health issue.  Eighteen percent of urban Rwandans tested positive, for the virus that causes AIDS, in 1989.   

The first known inhabitants of Rwanda were the Twa.  The Hutu, probably from the Congo River basin, were well established by the 15^th century, when the Tutsi came down from the north and conquered the area.  The Tutsi kings, or mwamis, became the absolute monarchs of the region.  Their rule was enforced by chiefs and subchiefs, who each ruled an umusozi, a kingdom that consisted of a single hill.  Political and economic relations were based on an unequal feudal relationship, known as the ubuhake system, in which the Hutu became a caste of serfs forced into subjugation and economic dependency by the Tutsi.  This caste system was rigidly upheld, and intermarriage was almost nonexistent.  A similar feudal system was dominant in Burundi.

In 1858, John Hanning Speke was the first European to visit the area.  German explorers arrived in the 1880s, and Roman Catholic clergy established missions in the area.  Later in the decade Rwanda (then called Ruanda) and Burundi (then called Urundi) were incorporated into German East Africa.  The indigenuous rulers maintained good relations with the Germans, and later, the Belgians, who occupied the country during the World War I (1914–1918).  After the war the area was mandated to Belgium by the League of Nations and became known as the Territory of Ruanda-Urundi.  Following World War II (1939–1945) it became a United Nations (UN) trust territory.  The Belgians continued previous policies of supporting education by missionaries and of ruling through the Tutsi chiefs.  However, they also forced the Tutsi to phase out the ubuhake system by 1958.

As political consciousness increased among Africans after World War II, the Hutu grew more vocal in protesting the political and social inequalities in Rwanda.  In 1959, the antagonism between the Tutsi and Hutu erupted into violence; the next year the Tutsi king fled the country, and an exodus of some 200,000 Tutsi followed.  A republic was established in January 1961.  In elections held the following September, the Hutu-dominated Parmehutu Party won a large majority of the seats in the National Assembly, and a 4-1 majority voted against the return of the king.

At the insistence of the United Nations trusteeship council, Belgium granted Rwanda independence on July 1, 1962, with Gregoire Kayibanda, leader of the Parmehutu (now renamed the Democratic Republican Movement; MDR), as president.  The MDR won the elections in 1965 and 1969.

In 1963, some exiled Tutsi returned to Rwanda as a rebel army.  Although unsuccessful, the takeover attempt prompted a large-scale massacre of Tutsi by the Hutu, followed by periodic ethnic violence.  At the same time thousands of Hutu victimized in Burundi took refuge in Rwanda.  In July 1973 the defense minister, General Juvenal Habyarimana, led a bloodless coup that ousted Kayibanda.  Habyarimana, a Hutu from the north, charged that Kayibanda favored southern Hutu and was trying to monopolize power.  Both parliament and the MDR were suspended after the coup.  Political activities resumed in 1975 with the formation of a new ruling party called the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD).  In 1978 a new constitution was approved, and President Habyarimana was confirmed in office for another five years.  After thwarting a coup attempt in 1980, he was reelected without opposition in 1983 and again in 1988.  In 1990, Belgium and several central African nations sent troops to Rwanda to oppose an uprising by the Tutsi-backed Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a movement of Tutsi refugees and moderate Hutu, invading from Uganda.  A new constitution authorizing the establishment of a multiparty democracy became law in 1991, and a prime minister was appointed to organize a transitional government in preparation for multiparty elections in 1995

Civil War

In April 1994, shortly after concluding peace negotiations with the RPF that called for UN peacekeeping forces to be stationed in Rwanda, President Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira were killed when their plane was shot down near Kigali.  Responsibility for the attack has not been established.  Habyarimana’s death provoked a wave of ethnic violence, prompting UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to accuse the Hutu-dominated Rwandan Army of genocide against the Tutsi.  At the height of the violence, the UN forces, lacking a mandate to protect civilians, abandoned Kigali.  Over the next few months, an estimated 500,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were massacred.  The RPF army pushed toward Kigali, and a civil war ensued.  In June the French government sent 2,500 troops to Rwanda to establish a safe area in the southwestern part of the country.  But attempts to mediate a cease-fire failed as the RPF mounted a successful final assault.

After capturing the capital of Kigali, RPF troops began to drive the Rwandan Army and Hutu civilians northwest, toward the Rwanda-Zaire border.  Retaliatory violence by Tutsi claimed several thousand lives, including that of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Kigali.  By mid-July, an estimated 1.2 million Rwandans had fled the advancing RPF army across the border and into Zaire, forming enormous refugee camps around the city of Goma.  By early August, an estimated one-quarter of the prewar population of Rwanda had either died or fled the country.  International relief efforts were mobilized to care for the refugees, but available supplies were inadequate and outbreaks of disease were widespread.  In the midst of the squalor of the camps, more than 20,000 refugees died in a cholera epidemic.

A cease-fire was declared in July and an RPF-backed government was established with Pasteur Bizimungu as president.  The RPF made a point of including other groups in the government.  In spite of international efforts, refugee camp conditions in Zaire and Tanzania have remained poor, due to transportation difficulties and the sheer number of refugees.  Many Tutsi refugees have returned to Rwanda, including refugees who had fled in the 1960s, but the repatriation of Hutu refugees has been slower, as many fear reprisals.  During an attempt to close the Kibeho refugee camp in southwest Rwanda in April 1995, government forces opened fire on a surging crowd in the camp.  The Rwandan government estimated the death toll at about 330 people, while the UN estimated that 2,000 people had been killed.  Several border confrontations between government forces and Hutu refugees occurred during 1995, resulting in hundreds of Hutu deaths.  Meanwhile, grossly overcrowded prison conditions in Rwanda have caused hundreds more deaths monthly.

Former United States president Jimmy Carter sponsored a summit in Cairo, Egypt, in November 1995, on the issue of Rwandan refugees.  The summit was attended by the presidents of Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zaire and a representative from Tanzania.  An agreement was reached to work to return refugees to Rwanda.  In the next months refugees began returning in large numbers from Burundi and Tanzania, but, few returned from Zaire.  The UN mission in Rwanda ended in March 1996.

Throughout 1996 more than 1 million Rwandan refugees, most of them Hutu, remained in camps in Zaire.  The civil war that erupted in eastern Zaire in late 1996 revealed that these camps contained small percentages of armed Hutu militias.  These Hutu, likely the same who led or participated in the 1994 massacres of Tutsi, used the huge refugee camps as places of refuge while they organized raids into Rwanda with the goal of overthrowing the RPF government.  The Hutu refugees remained in the camps either out of fear of Tutsi retribution in Rwanda or because they were held against their will by the militias.  The militias clashed with the largely Tutsi eastern Zairian rebels around Lake Kivu, often very close to the border between Rwanda and Zaire.  The Hutu militias were aided by the Zairian government, the Tutsi rebels in Zaire by the Rwandan government.  Cross-border artillery shelling was reported near Gisenyi, north of Lake Kivu.

In October and November 1996 the Tutsi rebels successfully routed Hutu militias in several huge refugee camps near the border.  Some 800,000 Rwandans poured home, but several hundred thousand remained in Zaire.  As the civil war spread and the rebels gained territory, the Rwandan refugees were forced west, deeper into the jungles of Zaire.  Despite international outcry over their plight, the constantly moving refugees remained largely beyond the reach of aid workers.  By the end of Zaire’s civil war in May, tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees had been killed in the fighting, or had died of disease or starvation.

The UN voted in late 1994 to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which opened in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1996.  Trials began in early 1997, but the UN tribunal has been criticized for mismanagement and poor organization.  The RPF government began its own trials of more then 90,000 people accused of crimes related to the 1994 massacres in 1996.  Meanwhile, Rwanda was again plagued with outbursts of ethnic violence in 1997 up to date.

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