n.
officially Republic of Rwanda
Country, east-central Africa.
Area: 9,757 sq mi (25,271 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 7,398,000. Capital: Kigali . The population is mostly Hutu , with a Tutsi minority. Languages: Rwanda, French, English (all official). Religions: Roman Catholicism, Islam, traditional beliefs. Currency: Rwanda franc. Rwanda is a mountainous, landlocked country. Most of it lies at an elevation of more than 5,000 ft (1,500 m). There are bamboo forests, wooded regions, and grassy savannas with rich and varied wildlife. It is a developing country with a mainly free-enterprise economy based on agriculture. It is ruled by a transitional regime with one legislative body; its head of state and government is the president, in conjunction with the prime minister and vice president. Originally inhabited by the Twa, a Pygmy people, it became home to the Hutu, who were well established there when the Tutsi appeared in the 14th century. The Tutsi conquered the Hutu and in the 15th century founded a kingdom near Kigali. The kingdom expanded steadily, and by the early 20th century Rwanda was a unified state with a military structure. The Belgians occupied Rwanda in 1916, and the League of Nations created Ruanda-Urundi as a Belgian mandate in 1923. The Tutsi retained their dominance until shortly before Rwanda reached independence in 1962, when the Hutu took control of the government and stripped the Tutsi of much of their land. Many Tutsi fled Rwanda, and the Hutu dominated the country's political system, waging sporadic civil wars until mid 1994, when the death of the country's leader in a plane crash led to massive violence. The Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took over the country by force after the massacre of almost 1,000,000 Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers by the Hutu. Two million refugees, mostly Hutu, fled to neighboring Congo (Kinshasa) after the RPF's victory. At the beginning of the 21st century, trials to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice started.