Rwanda 🇷🇼

Filed under Africa and more precisely Eastern Africa, Rwanda is a sovereign state. In formal use it is Republic of Rwanda. Kigali is the capital.

Around 14.3 million people live there, placing it 76th of 249 by population — between Benin above it and Burundi below. Among the 20 entries in Eastern Africa it ranks 13th by area and 11th by population.

By land area it covers 26,338 km², which ranks it 149th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Haiti and just ahead of North Macedonia. For scale, it is around a fifth smaller than Belgium.

Rwanda has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: DR Congo and Tanzania have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Rwanda's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Rwanda's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Rwanda's borders, Burundi and Uganda are landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇨🇩 DR Congo
• 🇹🇿 Tanzania

Its reference point sits at 2.0° south and 30.0° east, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 223 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Countries on the same parallel, far away in longitude, include Nauru.

Its land neighbours number 4: Burundi, DR Congo, Tanzania and Uganda. The largest of them by area is DR Congo, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 241.9 million people.

Rwanda is landlocked. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, which reliably raises the cost of trade, because port access depends on a transit agreement with a neighbour. 2 of its neighbours, Burundi and Uganda, are landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 541 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. The median across all 249 entries here is about 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Rwandan, so residents are Rwandans.

It recognises 3 languages: English, French and Kinyarwanda. Kinyarwanda is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Rwanda. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Inside Africa it places 29th of 59 by population, and it accounts for 2.9% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Rwanda sits 11th of 20 by population and 13th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Zimbabwe just above and Burundi just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Ethiopia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
• 🇧🇮 Burundi
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

The currency is the Rwandan franc (Fr, RWF). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Rwanda.

Its internet country code is .rw. Calls from overseas start with +250. In ISO terms it is rw in two letters and RWA in three.

Kigali is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

The Rwandan franc (RWF) is used only in Rwanda among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Rwanda among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.