RWANDA LANGUAGE

Rwanda also spelled Ruanda, also called Kinyarwanda a Bantu language spoken by some eight million people primarily in Rwanda and to a lesser extent in Burundi, Congo (Kinshasa), Uganda, and Tanzania. The Bantu languages form a subgroup of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Rwanda is closely related to the Rundi language of Burundi. The economy The country's economy is overwhelmingly agricultural, with coffee exports accounting for more than 70 percent of its foreign exchange and tea for more than 10 percent. An inadequate subsistence agriculture, however, is the dominant feature of the economy, with heavy infusions of foreign aid required to meet chronic food shortages. Rwanda is the largest per capita recipient of foreign aid in Africa. Mineral resources make up from 10 to 15 percent of total exports. Resources Mineral resources include, in addition to tin and tungsten (wolfram), tantalite, columbite, and beryl. Methane gas from Lake Kivu is used as a nitrogen fertilizer and is also converted into compressed fuel for trucks. What little gold Rwanda produces is smuggled out of the country. The Mukungwa hydroelectric power installation, the country's major source of electricity, meets only a portion of the country's energy needs, and much of the remainder must be imported from Congo (Kinshasa). The land Relief The landscape is reminiscent of a tropical Switzerland. Its dominant feature is a chain of mountains of rugged beauty that runs on a north-south axis and forms part of the Congo-Nile divide. From the volcanoes of the Virunga Mountains in the northwestwhere the Karisimbi reaches 14,787 feet (4,507 metres)the altitude drops to 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) in the swampy Kagera (Akagera) River valley in the east. The interior highlands consist of rolling hills and valleys, yielding to a low-lying depression west of the Congo-Nile divide along the shores of Lake Kivu. Drainage Except for the Ruzizi, through which the waters of Lake Kivu empty into Lake Tanganyika, most of the country's rivers are found on the eastern side of the Congo-Nile divide, with the Kagera, the major eastern river, forming much of the boundary between Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. The people Ethnic composition As in Burundi, the major ethnic groups are Hutu and Tutsi, respectively accounting for almost 90 percent and about 10 percent of the total population. To these must be added the Twa hunter-gatherers, who constitute less than 1 percent of the population. Other minorities include a small group of Europeans, mostly missionaries and aid officials, a small number of Asian merchants, and a sprinkling of Swahili-speaking Africans from Tanzania and Congo (Kinshasa). Though the Tutsi are generally taller and of lighter complexion than the Hutu, the physical stereotypes attributed to each group are greatly mitigated by intermarriage. Social differences between them, however, traditionally were profound, as shown by the system of patron-client ties (buhake, or cattle contract) through which the Tutsi gained social, economic, and political ascendancy over the Hutu agriculturalists. During the revolution some 300,000 Tutsi were forced out of the country, thus reducing the former ruling aristocracy to an even smaller minority. Linguistic composition French and Rwanda (more properly, Kinyarwanda), a Bantu language closely related to Rundi, are the official languages of the country, but only a small fraction of the population speaks French. Swahili is widely spoken in the towns and is still the principal means of communication with Africans from neighbouring territories.