Rwanda

In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Since then, most of the refugees have returned to Rwanda, but several thousand remained in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; the former Zaire) and formed an extremist insurgency bent on retaking Rwanda, much as the RPF tried in 1990. Rwanda held its first local elections in 1999 and its first post-genocide presidential and legislative elections in 2003. Rwanda in 2009 staged a joint military operation with the Congolese Army in DRC to rout out the Hutu extremist insurgency there and Kigali and Kinshasa restored diplomatic relations. Rwanda also joined the Commonwealth in late 2009.

Economical characteristics

 * Currency: Rwandan franc (ISO code: RWF)
 * Central bank discount rate: 11.25% (31 December 2008)
 * Commercial banks lending rate: NA% (31 December 2009 )
 * Stock of money (M1): $233.6 million (31 December 2005)
 * Quasi money (with M1 makes M2): $227.4 million (31 December 2005)

Notable events:

 * Banking crisis: 1991

Links

 * Rwanda on Wikipedia
 * Central bank of Rwanda
 * Country profile (pdf) from the Enterprise Studies page (part of the The World Bank Group)
 * BBC country profile