Rwanda Provinces

Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills, one of the most densely settled countries in Africa, and a round there is usually decided by altitude and by which side of the country you are on. The province is the first tier of that picture, and there are only five of them.

The quiz: Name to place, on the map
Grouped by: Two parts of the country, an unofficial cut
In the game: 5 provinces

Start

What you are looking at

The provinces (intara) of Rwanda, as the 2006 reform drew them: four named for their position, Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western, and Kigali, the city province around the capital. Before 2006 there were twelve, named for their main towns, so a map from before then looks nothing like this one.

Kigali is the small one at the heart of the country, and it is the only province that is not a compass point. The Eastern province is by far the largest: low, dry savannah running to the Tanzanian border and the Akagera park. The Western province follows the shore of Lake Kivu and the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Northern province holds the volcanoes on the Ugandan border, and the Southern province is everything between Kigali and Burundi.

The groups are not an official classification. Rwanda has no tier between the province and the country, so the quiz cuts the five into the highlands of the north and west and the lower country of the south and east (Kigali with it), to let you drill the map a piece at a time. The provinces are the Rwanda Districts grouped, so the borders of the two maps match exactly.

How to place one

Start with Kigali. It is the small province in the middle, and the one every other province touches or sits close to.
Take the east as one piece. The Eastern province is the broad half of the country from Kigali to Tanzania.
Follow the lake. The Western province is the strip along Lake Kivu, the long border with the Congo.
Split what is left by the volcanoes. The Northern province is the one that reaches the Virunga volcanoes at the Ugandan corner, and the Southern one is the part that reaches Burundi.

Every province, by group

North and West2 provinces: Northern, Western
South and East3 provinces: Eastern, Kigali, Southern

Worked examples

Eastern

The biggest of them

The Eastern province is the largest by a wide margin, and the flattest. It is the savannah side of Rwanda, with the lakes and swamps along the Akagera river on the Tanzanian border and the national park named for it.

Kigali

The one that is a city

Kigali is a province of its own, made up of three districts around the capital. It is the only one named for a place rather than a direction, and small enough that on a phone it needs a careful tap.

Frequently asked questions

How many provinces does Rwanda have?

Five: the City of Kigali, and the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western provinces. The reform of 2006 cut twelve down to these.

Why are the groups not official?

Rwanda has no administrative tier between the provinces and the country, so the quiz groups the five into two parts of the map by position.

What is below the province?

The districts, which number 30. They are their own quiz.

The tier below this one is Rwanda Districts. For another country at this level, see Senegal Regions.

Sources

geoBoundaries, Rwanda ADM2 and ADM1, the boundaries; the provinces are the districts dissolved, so the two maps share every border
Provinces of Rwanda, the five provinces and the districts in each

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