Banyarwanda

The Banyarwanda (Kinyarwanda: Abanyarwanda, plural; Umunyarwanda, singular) are a Bantu ethnolinguistic supraethnicity native to the northern African Great Lakes region, primarily the modern countries of Rwanda and Burundi. The Banyarwanda are also ethnic minorities in neighboring DR Congo, Uganda and Tanzania. Although the ethnic make-up of Burundi is similar to that of Rwanda, Banyarwanda is a political neologism used solely in Rwanda since the 1990s in order to mitigate ethnic division within the country following the Rwandan Civil War and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In the 1930s the Belgian colonial authorities, who controlled both Congo, Rwanda and Burundi at the time, implemented programs to encourage large numbers of Banyarwanda to emigrate to the Belgian Congo from Rwanda and Burundi. The population of Banyarwanda has increased later by large numbers fleeing violence in those two countries especially in the 1960s and the 1990s. An estimated 524,098 Banyarwanda live in Uganda, where they live in the west of the country; Umutara and Kitara are the centres of their pastoral and agricultural areas.