RWANDA

The ideal complement to the primate-oriented wildlife-viewing offered at Volcanoes and Nyungwe National Parks, Akagera is a classic savannah reserve that has undergone an ambitious recent rehabilitation programme to become a fully-fledged Big Five safari destination. As with Rwanda other national parks, the setting is spectacular: a chain of low grassy mountains that slope down to a tract of undulating most savannah hemmed in by an extensive wetland comprising a dozen lakes, extensive papyrus swamps and a labyrinth of channels fed by the meandering Akagera River.
Having suffered heavily from poaching and encroachment since the 1990s, Akagera was placed under the dynamic stewardship of the non-profit African Parks Network in 2010. Since them the boundaries have been fenced, the range of tourist activities has been expanded to include guided walks, boat trips and night drives, and an ongoing programme of reintroductions has resulted in the return of lions and black rhino, meaning that all the Big Five (a lost that also includes buffalo, elephant and leopard) can be seen. Other wildlife is also abundant, and the birdlife is truly fantastic, making Akagera a superb add-on to gorilla tracking in the Virungas.

Akagera offers excellent Big Five game viewing. Buffaloes are plentiful and easily seen, elephants are quite common but more difficult to track down, and leopards are observed with increasing frequency on night drives. Lion and black rhino had both been poached to extinction by 2005 but both have since been reintroduced. Seven lions were flown in from South Africa in 2015, followed by another two in 2017, and more than a dozen cubs have now been born in the park May 2017 saw the arrival of 18 black rhinos, one if which has already given birth to a health calf.

Sprawling magnificently across the elevated ridge that divides Africa’s two largest drainage systems, the Nile and the Congo …
the 1,015km² Nyungwe Forest National Park protects East Africa’s largest tract of montane rainforest in eastern Africa. The park is a remarkably rich centre of biodiversity, with more than 1,050 plant species recorded, among them 200 varieties of orchid, along with 85 mammal, 310 bird, 32 amphibian and 38 reptile species. The main attraction for most visitors is the opportunity to track a habituated group of chimpanzees, bu the park is home to a dozen other primate species, most conspicuously the acrobatic Ruwenzori colobus and striking L’Hoest’s monkey. Nyungwe is also highly alluring to birders, since it supports all but two of the 29 Albertine Rift Endemics that occur on the eastern rift escarpment, along with the dazzling great blue turaco, which is often seen is small flocks flapping clumsily across a road or forest clearing. It is also the site of East Africa’s only suspended canopy walkway.

Founded as recently as 1907, Kigali served as a minor administrative centre in the colonial era, and had a population of fewer than …
6,000 when it was selection as capital of newly-independent Rwanda due to its central location in 1962. Today, this strikingly neat and modern-looking highland city sprawls attractively across a series of hills spanning altitudes of 1,300-1,600m, and hosts a population well in excess of one million. Thanks in part to a longstanding nationwide ban on plastic bags, Kigali is widely regarded to be Africa’s cleanest city (in 2008, it became the first African town to be presented with the UN’s annual Habitat Scroll of Honour award). It is also the main port of entry to Rwanda, being the site if th country’s only international airport, and its central location makes it a useful base for exploration further afield.

The profoundly moving Kigali Genocide Memorial stands in Gisozi, the burial site of over 250,000 people killed in a three-month period during Rwanda’s
1994 genocide. The memorial is home to the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, which includes photographs, official documents and geographical data relating to the genocide. Kandt House Museum is set in Kigali’s oldest building, an unassuming example of colonial architecture built in 1907 for the eponymous explorer and German governor. It opened as Rwanda’s natural history museum in 1907, but following the recent relocation of most of its exhibits to the much larger Museum of the Environment in Karongi, it will focus more on the history of Rwanda and the development of Kigali as capital when eventually it reopens. Until that happens, Kandt House is still worth a visit for the great views over the city. The suburban Nyabugogo Market is Kigali’s busiest shopping area, with stalls and vendors selling offering everything from trendy trainers and shoes and the latest electronic equipment to fresh fruit and vegetables, and oven-warm baguettes. It is a fascinating, vibrant place to explore, but don’t take photos without the subject’s permission. The top birdwatching site in the city limits, the artificial Lake Nyarutarama frequently supports a variety of kingfishers, ducks, pelicans, herons and egrets, along with black crake, African jacana and pied and malachite kingfisher, while the surrounding grassland hosts a selection of widow birds, weavers, waxbills and seedeaters. A more far-flung but rewarding goal for birdwatchers, Nyabarongo Bridge spans the eponymous river as it flows through swampy Bugesera District about 15km south of Kigali. The main attraction here is aquatic and papyrus-associated birds, which range from pelicans and moorhens to localised papyrus-dwellers such as papyrus gonolek, white-winged scrub-warbler, papyrus yellow warbler and papyrus canary.

                  Rwanda’s Kwita Izina is a yearly recurring event started in 2005 where all the gorillas who have been born that year, are named. Naming a newly born baby has been part of Rwandan culture and tradition for centuries. Names attributed to the gorillas play a significant role in the on-going programme of monitoring each individual gorilla in their families and habitat. Kwita Izina, a uniquely Rwandan event, was introduced in 2005 with the aim of creating awareness of conservation efforts for the endangered mountain gorilla.
For three decades prior to the first official gorilla naming ceremony, the naming of baby gorillas was carried out by rangers and researchers that closely monitor these unique animals on a daily basis.
Kwita Izina has been attended by thousands of international, regional and local participants over the recent years. The Government of Rwanda and conservation partners have donated substantial resources to gorilla conservation and continue to do so. Each year new born gorilla babies are celebrated in an exciting event at the foothills of the Virunga Mountains.