ubushobozi project

Leaders kagame

The president of Rwanda is Paul Kagame. In August 2003, Kagame - who had been selected by MPs as president in 2000 - claimed a landslide victory in the first presidential elections since the 1994 genocide.

Rwanda has been relatively stable under Mr Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), but the Crisis Group - a conflict-prevention agency - reported in 2002 that the RPF tolerated no criticism or challenge to its authority.

Born in western Rwanda in 1957, Mr Kagame grew up in Uganda, where his parents fled to escape Hutu violence. He joined Yoweri Museveni - Uganda's future president - in the fight to topple Milton Obote, rising to become Mr Museveni's intelligence chief.

Kagame was instrumental in establishing the RPF, becoming its military commander. His rebel force ended the 1994 genocide.

Mr Kagame has rejected the conclusions of a French report which said he ordered the 1994 rocket attack on a plane carrying the then-president, which sparked the genocide.

Known to his colleagues as an incorruptible teetotaller, Mr Kagame downplays any ethnic agenda, presenting himself as a Rwandan and not a Tutsi. His government has redrawn Rwanda's political boundaries in an attempt to blur the distinction between ethnic Hutu and Tutsi areas.

Facts

• Full name: Republic of Rwanda

• Population: 10 million (UN, 2008)

• Capital: Kigali

• Area: 26,338 sq km (10,169 sq miles)

• Official languages: Kinyarwanda, French, English

• Unofficial language: Swahili

• Major religions: Christianity, indigenous beliefs

• Life expectancy: 45 years (men), 48 years (women) (UN)

Overview

The most notorious massacre in the history of Rwanda began in April 1994. The shooting down of the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his Burundian counterpart, near Kigali triggered what appeared to be a coordinated attempt by Hutus to eliminate the Tutsi population.

In response, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched a military campaign to control the country. It achieved this by July, by which time at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been brutally massacred.

Some two million Hutus fled to Zaire, now the DR Congo. They included some of those responsible for the massacres, and some joined Zairean forces to attack local Tutsis. Rwanda responded by invading refugee camps dominated by Hutu militiamen.

Meanwhile, Laurent Kabila, who seized control of Zaire and renamed it the DR Congo, failed to banish the Hutu extremists, prompting Rwanda to support the rebels trying to overthrow him.

Rwanda withdrew its forces from DR Congo in late 2002 after signing a peace deal with Kinshasa. But tensions simmered, with Rwanda accusing the Congolese army of aiding Hutu rebels in eastern DR Congo.

Rwanda has used traditional "gacaca" community courts to try those suspected of taking part in the 1994 genocide. But key individuals - particularly those accused of orchestrating the slaughter - appear before an International Criminal Tribunal in northern Tanzania.

The country is striving to rebuild its economy, with coffee and tea production being among its main sources of foreign exchange. Nearly two thirds of the population live below the poverty line.