The Republic of Rwanda, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, is a landlocked country located in the Great Lakes region of eastern-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania.

Although close to the equator, the country has a cool temperate climate due to its high elevation. The terrain consists mostly of grassy uplands and gently rolling hills. Abundant wildlife, including rare mountain gorillas, have resulted in tourism becoming one of the biggest sectors of the country's economy.

Rwanda has received considerable international attention due to its 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. Since then the country has made a recovery and is now considered as a model for developing countries. In 2009 a CNN report labeled Rwanda as Africa's biggest success story, having achieved stability, economic growth (average income has tripled in the past ten years) and international integration. The government is widely seen as one of the more efficient and honest ones in Africa. In 2007 Fortune magazine published an article titled "Why CEOs Love Rwanda."  The capital, Kigali, is the first city in Africa to be awarded the Habitat Scroll of Honor Award in the recognition of its "cleanliness, security and urban conservation model." In 2008, Rwanda became the first country to elect a national legislature in which a majority of members were women. Rwanda joined the Commonwealth of Nations on 29 November 2009 as itsfifty-fourth member, making the country one of only two in the Commonwealth without a British colonial past.

Most Rwandans are Christian, with significant changes since the genocide. A 2006 study reported that 56.5 percent of the population were Catholic (with a 6.9% increase since the 2001 survey), 37.1 percent Protestant (of which 11.1 percent are Seventh Day Adventists, and 14,000 Jehovah's Witnesses), 4.6 percent Muslim, 1.7 claimed no religious beliefs, and 0.1 percent practiced traditional indigenous beliefs.

Figures from 2001 survey were 49.6 % Catholic, 43.9 % Protestant, 4.6 % Muslim, 1.7 % no religious beliefs, and 0.1 % traditional indigenous beliefs. This represented a 19.9 percent increase in the number of Protestants, a 7.6 percent drop in the number of Catholics, and a 3.5 percent increase in the number of Muslims from the U.N. Population Fund survey in 1996.

There has been a proliferation of small, usually Christian-linked schismatic religious groups since the 1994 Genocide. The figures for Protestants include the growing number of members of Jehovah's Witnesses and evangelical Protestant groups. There also is a small population of Baha'is and Jews.

The Muslim community may have grown in part because Muslims are reported to have saved the lives of many Tutsis from Hutu attacks. Some estimate the Muslim population of the country to be as high as 14%.

According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Rwanda hosted 54,200 refugees and asylum seekers in 2007. Approximately 51,300 refugees and asylum seekers were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 2,900 from Burundi.

Information provided through Wikipedia.