Rwanda is the landlocked country with Kigali as its capital and the nickname “Land of a Thousand Hills.”
Rwanda is a small, densely populated country in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Its landscape is marked by steep hills, high plateaus, and volcanic mountains, which inspired the long-standing descriptive nickname. Kigali, centrally located, has been the capital since independence in 1962 and is the country’s largest urban center.
Rwanda borders Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although it has no sea coast, it lies near Lake Kivu and the headwaters of rivers in the Nile and Congo basins. The country’s three official languages are Kinyarwanda, English, and French; Swahili also has official status for use in some contexts.
Rwanda’s modern history includes the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, after which the country underwent major political and social reconstruction. The nickname refers to terrain, not to a precise count of hills.