Rwanda

Rwanda or Rwanda (Kinyarwanda u Rwanda, French: le Rwanda) is a densely populated landlocked country in East Africa. It borders Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Tanzania. Because of its hilly landscape, Rwanda is also called the "land of a thousand hills." The main African watershed between the catchment areas of the Nile and the Congo runs through the national territory. From 1884 to 1916, Rwanda was a German colony as part of German East Africa.

After World War I, it became a Belgian League of Nations mandate in 1919 and a UN trust territory after 1945. It gained independence in 1962. Because of structural problems, a high population density and conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups-culminating in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were murdered by radical Hutu-the country was among the poorest in Africa. Since the end of the civil war, an economic reconstruction process has begun, fueled in part by the exploitation of raw materials in the eastern Congo provinces. Paul Kagame has been president since 2000, governing the country authoritatively in a kind of education and development dictatorship.

The system of government has come under international criticism for lack of freedom of the press, suppression of the opposition, manipulation of elections and destabilization of eastern Congo. With an average annual economic growth rate of about 8 percent from 2001 to 2015, Rwanda has long been one of the countries in Africa with the strongest economic growth. Large parts of the economy are controlled by the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front party. Rwandan society is also characterized by the unusually high participation of women in economic and political power by African standards.