Kigali

Kigali (Kinyarwanda pronunciation: ki.ɡɑ́.ɾi), officially the City of Kigali also known as Kigali City (abbreviated as KGL), is the capital, largest city, and a province-level administrative unit of Rwanda. It sits near the country's geographic centre, in a landscape of rolling hills, valleys, and ridges connected by steep slopes. For the sector within Nyarugenge District, see Kigali (sector).

Kigali is a relatively young city. It was founded in 1907 as a German administrative outpost and remained a small administrative centre until it became the national capital at independence in 1962. This moved the main administrative focus away from Huye, which was formerly called Astrida. Today, Kigali has about 1,745,555 people as of 31 August 2022, roughly seven times the population of Gisenyi, the country's second most populous city. The city also has a special facility in Gashora, where refugees being resettled from crisis zones, mainly from Libya and Yemen, can stay temporarily while they receive medical care and legal processing. UNHCR coordinates operations for nearly 135,000 refugees in the area. Before it was cancelled in July 2024, the Rwanda asylum plan, also called the "Rwanda Plan," was an agreement to accept deported migrants from the United Kingdom.

Kigali's history goes back to the 15th century, when the area was controlled by the Kingdom of Rwanda. At the beginning of the 20th century, it came under the German Empire. In 1907, Richard Kandt, the colonial resident, chose the site for his headquarters because of its central location, views, and security. Foreign merchants began trading in the city during the German era. Belgium later took control of Rwanda and Burundi during World War I. Kigali stayed the seat of colonial administration for Rwanda, but it was still a small city, with a population of just 6,000 at the time of independence. In 1994, the country suffered the Rwandan genocide, which followed the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana when his aircraft was shot down near Kigali. The genocide killed over 500,000 Tutsi. Afterwards, the city experienced rapid population growth and much of it was rebuilt.

Kigali is one of the five provinces of Rwanda. It is divided into three districts: Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge. The city hosts the main residence and offices of the president of Rwanda and most government ministries. The largest contributor to Kigali's gross domestic product is the service sector, but many people also work in agriculture, including small-scale subsistence farming. City authorities want to attract international visitors, including for leisure tourism, conferences, and exhibitions.

Etymology

The name Kigali comes from the Kinyarwanda prefix ki- and the suffix -gali, which means wide or broad. It was first used for Mount Kigali, most likely because the mountain was broad and wide. The city was later named after the mountain. Rwandan oral history says the name began in the 14th century.

Rwandan scholar Alexis Kagame studied the country's oral history and traditions. He wrote that the name Kigali came into use after King Cyilima I Rugwe conquered the area. The legend says Rugwe looked over the land from the top of a hill and said burya iki gihugu ni kigali, which means "this country is vast".

History

See also: Timeline of Kigali

The first people in the area were the Twa, a group of hunter-gatherers who still live in Rwanda today. Later, Bantu groups, including the Hutu and Tutsi, began clearing forests for farming. According to oral history, the Kingdom of Rwanda was founded in the 14th century near Lake Muhazi, and Kigali was then a small part of it. The kingdom's capital was at Nyanza. The founding of Kigali as a city is generally dated to 1907, when German explorer Richard Kandt was appointed as the first resident of Rwanda and made the city his headquarters. He chose the site for its central location, good views, and security. Kandt's house is now the Kandt House Museum of Natural History. In 1916, during World War I, Belgian forces took control of the city, with Kigali being captured by the Northern Brigade led by Colonel Philippe Molitor. Much of the colonial administration took place in Usumbura, so Kigali remained relatively small.

Kigali became the capital when Rwandan independence came in 1962. The authorities chose it over Nyanza and the southern city of Butare because of its more central location. The city grew steadily, reaching about 25,000 people in the early 1970s and around 250,000 by 1991. In 1973, a bloodless military coup overthrew President Grégoire Kayibanda. During the Rwandan Civil War, the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front came close to attacking the city in 1993. In April 1994, President Habyarimana was assassinated when his plane was shot down near Kigali International Airport. This was the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide, in which 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were killed. The Rwandan Patriotic Front took control of Kigali on 4 July, a date now commemorated as Liberation Day, a Rwandan national holiday.

Since the war, the city has grown rapidly, through migration and a high birth rate, and much of it has been rebuilt with modern office buildings and infrastructure. A masterplan adopted in 2013 seeks to make Kigali a decentralised modern city by 2040. Along with this development, residents in informal housing zones have been forced to leave their homes, and Human Rights Watch has accused the government of removing poor people and children from the city's streets and moving them to detention centres.

Geography

Kigali is in the centre of Rwanda. It uses Central Africa Time, which is two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time all year round. The City of Kigali is a province-level administrative unit. It was set up in 2006, along with the country's four provinces (Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Western), as part of a change in how local government works. The city is split into three districts: Nyarugenge in the south west, Kicukiro in the south east, and Gasabo, which covers the northern half of the city. Buildings and roads cover about 70 per cent of the city's land.

Kigali sits in an area of rolling hills, with the city spread across many ridges and valleys joined by steep slopes. The average height of the city is 1,567 metres (5,141 feet) above sea level, and the lowest parts, in the valleys, are about 1,300 metres (4,300 feet). Some hills, such as Rebero in the south, rise well above this average. Higher peaks surround the city, including Mount Kigali, at 1,853 metres (6,079 feet), and Mount Jali to the north, at 2,071 metres (6,795 feet). The Nyabarongo River, part of the upper waters of the Nile, forms the western and southern edges of the city, though it lies mostly outside the built-up area. The largest river in the city is the Nyabugogo River, which flows between Mount Kigali and Mount Jali and joins the Nyabarongo. Most of the city's land is part of the Nyabugogo's drainage basin. Wetlands along the rivers help store water and protect the city from floods, but they are threatened by farming and building. The "Umusambi Village" is a restored marshland that gives shelter to vulnerable grey crowned cranes.

Cityscape

Kigali's central business district (CBD), sometimes called mu mujyi ("in town") in Kinyarwanda, is on Nyarugenge Hill. It was the site of the original city, founded by Richard Kandt in 1907. Several of Rwanda's tallest buildings, including the 20-storey Kigali City Tower, are in the CBD, along with the country's largest banks, businesses, Mille Collines hotel, University Teaching Hospital of Kigali, College of Science and Technology, and government buildings like the National Bank of Rwanda and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. To the southwest is the suburb of Nyamirambo, which was built in the 1920s by the Belgian colonial government for civil servants and Swahili traders. Many of the traders were Islamic, so it became known as the "Muslim Quarter." In 2015, the travel publisher Rough Guides called Nyamirambo "Kigali's coolest neighbourhood." Nyabugogo, in the lowest part of the city, is home to Kigali's main bus and share taxi station.

The other suburbs spread east of the CBD across the many hills and ridges, forming an urban sprawl. Kiyovu is the closest. Its higher part, south of the main road KN3, has long been home to wealthy residents and has large houses and restaurants. The Rwandan president's residence is there too. Until 2008, the lower part of Kiyovu had informal settlements, but the government took over the houses that year and moved residents to other areas, including a new estate in Batsinda. The government plans a new business district there, though by late 2017 only a few buildings had been built. Other eastern suburbs include Kacyiru, where most government departments and the office of the president are located; Gisozi, home to the Kigali Genocide Memorial; Nyarutarama, which has the city's only golf course; Kimihurura; Remera; and Kanombe, where Kigali International Airport is located. In recent years, Kigali has been ranked the "cleanest city in Africa."

Climate

Under the Köppen climate classification, Kigali has a tropical savanna climate (Aw). Because the city is high up, it is cooler than many other places near the equator.

Temperatures in Kigali usually range from 15 to 27 °C (59 to 81 °F) and change very little through the year. The city has two rainy seasons each year, from February to June and from September to December. Two dry seasons come between them. The main dry season runs from June to September and often has no rain at all. A shorter, less severe dry season runs from December to February. April is the wettest month, with an average of 154 millimetres (6.1 in) of rain, and July is the driest. Global warming has changed the pattern of the rainy seasons. A report by the Strategic Foresight Group found that there are fewer rainy days each year, but more very heavy downpours. The group also describes Rwanda as a country that is warming quickly. Its average temperature rose by between 0.7 °C and 0.9 °C over the 50 years to 2013.

Demographics

In the 2022 Rwandan census, Kigali had 1,745,555 people. At independence in 1962, the city had about 6,000 people, mostly those linked to the Belgian colonial residency. The city grew after it became the capital, but it stayed fairly small until the 1970s because government policies limited rural-to-urban migration. The city lost many people during the 1994 genocide, through deaths and through flight to neighbouring countries. After 1995, many Tutsi refugees returned from Uganda and settled in Kigali and other towns, and the city grew quickly again. By the 2012 census, the population was 1.13 million, partly because the city's boundaries had been expanded. Most residents are young, and 73 per cent are under 30.

The service sector is the largest part of Kigali's economy. The World Bank estimated that services made up 53 per cent of GDP in 2014, while a 2012 study by Surbana International Consultants put the figure at almost 62 per cent. Attracting visitors is a priority for the city and the Rwanda Development Board. Kigali is the main arrival point for tourists visiting Rwanda's national parks and tracking mountain gorillas. New flights by RwandAir and facilities such as the Kigali Convention Centre have brought events to the city, including the African Development Bank's 2014 Annual General Assembly and a 2018 summit of the African Union. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was held in June 2022, with Charles, Prince of Wales attending, after being postponed from June 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture is the largest employer, but industry made up only 14 per cent of GDP in 2014. A special economic zone on Masoro Hill opened in 2014, and the Rwanda Stock Exchange launched in 2011. The city is also near deposits of cassiterite and tungsten. Cassiterite is mined in Rutongo, and much of the raw mineral is exported, though some is processed at the Karuruma smelter.

Governance and politics

Kigali is one of the five provinces of Rwanda. A 2005 law set its current boundaries and gave the city government responsibility for strategic planning and urban development. The city is divided into the districts of Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge, which are split into 35 sectors. A new system, introduced in January 2020, gave the city council much more power, including control of the budget, and the districts stopped being separate legal entities. The council has eleven members: six are elected by the public and five are appointed by the president of Rwanda, subject to the approval of the cabinet. The mayor is chosen through a complex electoral college system and, as of 2023, the mayor is Samuel Dusengiyumva. Past mayors include Francois Karera, who served from 1975 to 1990, and Rose Kabuye, who was the first mayor after the genocide, from 1994 to 1997. Many national government offices are also based in Kigali, including the office of the president and the Chamber of Deputies and Senate.

Policing in Kigali is provided by the Rwanda National Police. The Overseas Security Advisory Council praises the police's professionalism but says they have limited resources and lack some specialist skills. Even so, Kigali has a reputation as a relatively safe city, and the Lonely Planet guidebook calls it "a genuine contender for the safest capital in Africa." Police credit their work to "efficient operations and daily surveillance" and to community policing. Rwanda as a whole has lower rates of intentional homicides per 100,000 people than several neighbouring countries. Although the constitution allows freedom of assembly, protests are rare, and the Freedom House research institute says fear of arrest discourages most of them.

Culture

Kigali was not always the centre of Rwanda's cultural heritage. Traditional dance began at the royal court in Nyanza, but many groups in the capital now perform it, including the LEAF community arts troupe, whose founding members were eighteen homeless orphaned children, and Indatirwabahizi, a troupe linked to the city government. Drums are very important in traditional Rwandan music. The most popular modern music is hip hop, mixed with dancehall, rap, ragga, R&B and dance-pop. The Kigali Up music festival has been held every year since 2011. Many films about the Rwandan genocide were filmed in Kigali, including 100 Days, Sometimes in April, Shooting Dogs and Shake Hands with the Devil. The city's own film industry grew from the Rwanda Film Centre, founded by journalist Eric Kabera. Its goal was to show other parts of Rwanda, not only the genocide. The name "Hillywood", from Rwanda's nickname "land of a thousand hills" and Hollywood, refers to the Rwanda Film Festival and the film industry. In 2023, the first film festival called Kigali Cine Junction was held in the neighbourhoods of Nyamirambo and Biryogo. Its organisers included Samuel Ishimwe, and American director Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was shown on the opening night. Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo was the special guest. The second edition in 2024 featured Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, and her film Omen was shown.

On Genocide Memorial Day, a national holiday observed every year on 7 April, the Kigali Genocide Memorial hosts Kwibuka, when the president lights a "flame of hope" and addresses the nation. Every last Saturday of the month, Kigali takes part in umuganda, a morning of mandatory community service from 8 am to 11 am, when most normal services close. Kigali's food is similar to that of the rest of the country. Common staple foods include bananas, plantains (ibitoke), pulses, sweet potatoes, beans, and cassava. Many restaurants serve a mélange buffet with these foods, and chips are also common. Brochettes are the most popular evening food, and the city also has Chinese, French, Indian and Italian restaurants. Popular drinks include ikivuguto, a fermented milk, and urwagwa banana beer.

In colonial and pre-genocide Rwanda, Butare was the country's main centre of tertiary education, including the Nyakibanda Major Seminary and the National University of Rwanda (UNR). Kigali did not become a major centre of learning until the late 1990s, when institutions such as the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology and the Kigali Independent University were founded. More followed in the 21st century, including the University of Kigali, Mount Kenya University, and Carnegie Mellon University's college of engineering. In 2013, the government merged several public institutions, including the Kigali ones, with the UNR and Umutara Polytechnic to create the University of Rwanda. In 2018, 50,594 students were enrolled at tertiary institutions in Kigali.

In 2018, Kigali had 239 primary schools and 143 secondary schools. The Ministry of Education and UNICEF say many children drop out between primary and secondary school because of weak numeracy and English skills, cost, household work, and few teaching resources. Kigali's top-performing secondary schools included FAWE Girls' School. Private schools such as École Belge and the International School of Kigali offer programmes like the International General Certificate of Secondary Education and the International Baccalaureate. On 14 September 2022, the government announced that from the 2022–2023 academic year, parents would no longer pay school fees for pre-primary and primary students, but would contribute Rwf975 for a school feeding programme.

Sport

The largest sports venue in Kigali is Amahoro Stadium in the Remera area. It was built in the 1980s and holds 45,000 people. It is mainly used for association football, and it hosts most home games of the Rwanda national football team. It was one of four stadiums used for the 2016 African Nations Championship, including the final, which the Democratic Republic of the Congo won against Mali. The stadium also hosts rugby union matches, including those of the national team, as well as concerts and public events. The Amahoro complex has an indoor venue called the Petit stade and a Paralympic playing hall. The Kigali Arena, next to Amahoro Stadium, opened in 2019 and holds 10,000 people. It hosts basketball, including the AfroBasket 2021 tournament, as well as handball, volleyball, and tennis. Other venues include the 22,000-seat Pele Stadium and the Rwanda Cricket Stadium in Gahanga, which opened in 2017. Rwanda's only golf course, the Kigali Golf Club in Nyarutarama, was being expanded to eighteen holes as of 2020.

Seven of the sixteen teams in the Rwanda Premier League are based in Kigali, and most of them play at several venues rather than their own stadiums. The two most successful teams are also from the city. APR FC won eighteen championships between 1969 and 2020, and Rayon Sports won nine in the same period. As of 2020, ten of the fourteen teams in Rwanda's National Basketball League played their home games in Kigali. This includes the two most successful clubs, Patriots BBC and Espoir BBC, which have won five and four league titles. In July 2025, the $26 million Zaria Court complex was opened in the capital. It was co-founded by Masai Ujiri, and it supports Rwanda's goals in sports, culture, and creativity. Kigali was also awarded the 2025 UCI Road World Championships, the first time this event has come to Africa.

Infrastructure

The Rwandan government has increased investment in the transport infrastructure of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, with aid from the United States, European Union, Japan, China, and others. Kigali is the centre of the country's road network, and paved roads link it to most other major cities and towns. Roads also connect it to other East African Community countries, namely Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya, and to the Congolese cities of Goma and Bukavu. The most important trade route is the road to the port of Mombasa via Kampala and Nairobi, known as the Northern Corridor. In 2012 the city had 1,017 kilometres (632 mi) of road, but only fourteen per cent was paved, and many unpaved sections were poor and dangerous in rain. Since the 1990s, authorities have gradually improved road surfaces and upgraded most of the main routes to dual carriageways.

Few households own cars, so most residents rely on public transport. Minibuses were once the main form of travel, but in the 2010s they were phased out in many areas for larger buses, some of which accept cashless payment with a "Tap & Go" card. Motorcycle taxis are very popular, and the government plans to replace petrol motorcycles with electric vehicles. Online booking has also been introduced for taxicabs. Bicycle taxis were reintroduced in 2014 after a period when they were banned.

International coaches run from Nyabugogo to destinations in East Africa, including Kampala, reached via Gatuna and Kabale or via Kagitumba. Some Kampala services continued to Nairobi in Kenya, but the Rwanda–Uganda border was closed in 2019 during a diplomatic dispute. As of 2020, Rwanda has no railways, but it has agreed with Tanzania to build a standard-gauge railway to Isaka, where it could connect to the Central Line or the future Tanzania Standard Gauge Railway to reach Dar es Salaam. Kigali International Airport is the nation's main airport, and its busiest routes go to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi and Entebbe International Airport. A new Bugesera International Airport is being built to add capacity, and it will become the country's largest when it opens. The domestic route to Kamembe Airport is the only one within the country.

Kigali's electricity once came almost entirely from hydroelectric power stations on Lakes Burera and Ruhondo, which provided 90 per cent of Rwanda's electricity. Falling water levels and rising demand led to loadshedding in 2003–04, so the government installed diesel generators, which were costly. Power outages remained frequent in the late 2010s, and the government and Rwanda Energy Group began investing in new power stations and power lines. By 2018, 82 per cent of Kigali's households had electricity, and most are connected to Rwanda's wide area synchronous grid. Rwanda has five national referral hospitals, four of them in Kigali, including the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali, which is run by the Ministry of Health and plans to move to the Masaka area. Others include King Faisal Hospital, built with help from the Saudi Fund for Development. In 2021 a new 300-bed hospital opened as a specialist centre for COVID-19 patients. Healthcare is partly funded through local health insurance schemes called mutuelles de santé, which were made available nationwide by the mid-2000s.

Media

Eleven different TV stations broadcast in Rwanda, and ten of them are based in Kigali. Two organisations provide these stations: the public Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA) and the Chinese company StarTimes. The channels are sent out from two transmitters near Kigali, one on Mount Jali and one in Gasabo. StarTimes also runs a paid TV service, along with two other networks, Azam and Tele10. A 2017 survey by the research firm GeoPoll found that Rwanda TV was the most popular station, with 45.2 per cent of the audience. Rwanda TV was once run by the government, but it was moved to the RBA in 2013.

Several radio stations also operate in Kigali, with transmitters on Mount Jali and Mount Rebero, in the south of the city. In the same 2017 survey, the RBA-owned Radio Rwanda was the most popular, with 38.6 per cent of the national audience. All three of the most popular stations are based in Kigali. Some overseas radio stations can be heard on FM in Kigali, including BBC News, Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle. Newspapers printed in Kigali include The New Times, the country's largest English-language paper, along with French and Kinyarwanda papers. International groups such as Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House say that Rwandan media does not have press freedom, and that the government often censors it or forces it to censor itself.