RWANDA

RWANDA STATS



CAPITAL:  KIGALI
POPULATION: 7,600,000
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/FRENCH
BELOW POVERTY: 60%
ACCESS TO WATER: 65%
ACCESS TO IMPROVED SANITATION: 23%
AVERAGE ANNUAL INCOME: $1,608
CHRISTIAN: 94%

PARTNERED NGO

Since 1994, World Relief has been working with churches to change lives and bring hope to Rwanda.

RWANDA FACTS

NEWS
RWANDA has a history of conflict dating back centuries.  In 1994, as a part of the Tutsi 10 commandments, the Hutus began a systematic genocide of the Tutsi population.  For approximately 100 days over 1 million Tutsi's were brutally murdered in an orchestrated ethnic cleansing. 

While Rwanda has been trying to overcome this legacy and has progressively recovered its stability, the economic situation is still precarious - 65% of the population lived below the poverty line in 2000 versus 45% in 1985. The war seriously affected the country’s human capital as well as its agricultural and industrial infrastructures. In addition to the challenges of reconstruction and national reconciliation, Rwanda must also face long-term poverty and health-related issues. One of the most densely populated countries in Africa, Rwanda has a very high population growth rate (2.9% per annum), which limits the amount of land a family can access for agricultural production. Approximately 92% of the Rwandan labor force is involved in agriculture, although many of these individuals are simply subsistence farmers struggling to feed their families. The average per capita income is about $250 per year, but significant socioeconomic discrepancies exist between the country’s rural and urban areas: 68% of the rural population lives below the poverty line versus 22.6% of the urban population.

Another scourge, the AIDS pandemic, is ravaging lives and has a significant impact on the country, increasingly impoverishing those affected by the virus. In Rwanda, the overall prevalence rate among adults is 3% and it is estimated that one in four adults has HIV in Kigali. The number of orphans--from AIDS as well as other causes--is also large and requires a compassionate response.

World Relief