10 Best Self Drive Camps For Self-Drive in Rwanda
While on self-drive tour in Rwanda, there are numerous budget and affordable lodges and guest...
Welcome to Rwanda Insights an online magazine with all the Rwanda visitors information that will help to organize your travel to Rwanda.
On this guide you will find all the tourist places to visit in Rwanda wildlife, primates, Lakes, culture & genocides and much more.
Rwanda is a land locked country and known as the smartest small country in East Africa. It is famously known for the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park, Chimpanzee trekking in the Nyungwe Forest National Park and the wildlife safari in the Akagera National Park.
It is so much loved for the cultural performances like the Intore dance that you can experience at the Rwanda Museum in Butare.
History of Rwanda
Rwanda’s human occupation is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 16th century, the inhabitants had organized into a number of kingdoms.
And by the 19th century, Mwami (king) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda conducted a decades-long process of military conquest and administrative consolidation that resulted into the kingdom coming to control most of Rwanda. The colonial powers (Germany and Belgium) allied with the Rwandan court.
A convergence of anti-colonial and anti-Tutsi sentiment resulted into Belgium granting independence in 1962. Direct elections resulted in a representative government dominated by the majority Hutu under President Grégoire Kayibanda.
Unsettled ethnic and political tensions were worsened when Juvénal Habyarimana (who was also Hutu) seized power in 1973.
In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed of 10,000 Tutsi refugees from previous decades of unrest, invaded the country, starting the Rwandan Civil War. The war went on worsening ethnic tensions as the Hutu feared losing their gains.
The massacre of Habyarimana sped up the eruption of the 1994 genocide in which hundreds and thousands of Tutsi and some moderate Hutus were killed. The Tutsi RPF conquered Rwanda and thousands of Hutu were imprisoned pending the establishment of the Gacaca courts.
Millions of Hutu fled as refugees leading to large refugee camps of Hutu in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo where there were already refugees from other countries.
These were disbanded by an RPF – sponsored invasion in 1996 that replaced the new Congolese president as the result of the First Congo War.
A second invasion to replace the new Congolese president initiated the Second Congo War, the deadliest war since World War II and one involving many African nations including Rwanda.