Kigali

Did You Know?

• The name Kigali comes from the Kinyarwanda prefix ki- combined with the adjective suffix -gali, meaning wide or broad, originally applied to Mount Kigali.
• Kigali's central business district is sometimes known by the Kinyarwanda term mu mujyi, meaning 'in town'.
• The house that Richard Kandt lived in is now the Kandt House Museum of Natural History.

History

The earliest inhabitants of the area were Twa hunter-gatherers, followed by Bantu groups including Hutu and Tutsi. The Kingdom of Rwanda was founded in the 14th century near Lake Muhazi, east of modern Kigali, and the early kingdom included Kigali as a small state. After invasions and conquests, a new dynasty under Ruganzu II Ndoli in the 17th century established Rwandan dominance, with the capital at Nyanza. The founding of Kigali is generally dated to 1907, when German administrator Richard Kandt established it as his headquarters. Scholar Alexis Kagame proposed an alternative theory that the city was a capital under Cyilima I Rugwe in the 1300s or 1500s, but there is little direct evidence. Kandt arrived in 1899 to explore Lake Kivu and search for the Nile's source.

Governance and politics

Kigali is a province-level city, one of Rwanda's five provinces, with boundaries established through a 2005 law as part of local-government restructuring. The city is divided into three districts—Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge—which are further divided into 35 sectors. From January 2020, a new administrative system gave the city council greater power, including budget control, and districts ceased to be separate legal entities, with their mayors replaced by district executive administrators appointed by the national government.

The city council has eleven members: six directly elected (one man and one woman per district) and five appointed by the president subject to cabinet approval, each serving renewable five-year terms. The mayor is elected via a complex electoral college system; as of 2023 the incumbent is Samuel Dusengiyumva. Notable past mayors include Francois Karera (1975–1990) and Rose Kabuye, the first post-genocide mayor from 1994 to 1997. A city manager appointed by the prime minister handles day-to-day budget and staff management.

Culture

Kigali was not historically the hub of Rwanda's cultural heritage; traditional dance originated at the royal court in Nyanza. However, the capital now hosts many groups performing the dance, including the LEAF community arts troupe and Indatirwabahizi, a cultural troupe affiliated with the city government. Drums are important in traditional Rwandan music, with drummers playing in groups of seven to nine. Traditional music and songs are performed by acts such as the Gakondo Group led by Massamba Intore.

The city has a growing popular music industry influenced by African Great Lakes, Congolese, and American music, with hip hop being the most popular genre. The Kigali Up music festival has been held annually since 2011, and the Hobe Rwanda Festival features music, dance, and local art. Several films about the Rwandan genocide have been filmed in Kigali, including 100 Days, Sometimes in April, Shooting Dogs, and Shake Hands with the Devil. The domestic film industry began in the early 2000s with the Rwanda Film Centre, and the Rwanda Film Festival, inaugurated in 2005, held its last edition in October 2019.

Infrastructure

Kigali is the centre of Rwanda's road network, with paved roads linking it to most major towns and to other countries in the East African Community, as well as to Goma and Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The most important trade route is the Northern Corridor to the port of Mombasa via Kampala and Nairobi. Within the city, there were 1017 km of road in 2012, but only fourteen per cent was paved; improvements have been made since the 1990s, upgrading many arterial routes to dual-carriageway.

Car ownership is low, with six per cent of households owning one in 2011. Most residents use public transport; minibuses historically dominated but have been phased out in favour of larger buses, some with cashless payment. Motorcycle taxis are popular, with over 10,486 registered drivers in 2012, and the government plans to replace petrol-powered motorcycles with electric vehicles. Online booking and metering have been introduced for motorcycles and taxicabs, and bicycle taxis were reintroduced in 2014 after a period of being banned.