Kigali

Currency budget Rwanda

Hotels, the better restaurants and the supermarkets take Visa; smaller places, motos and markets want francs or MTN Mobile Money. Forex bureaux in town give a better rate than the banks for clean, recent dollar and euro notes — older or torn notes are refused. Gorilla permits, park fees and most lodges are priced in dollars.

ATMs & cards

Bank of Kigali, I&M, Equity and Ecobank all have machines in the centre and in the malls, and Visa is the card most reliably taken. Kigali is the place to stock up before the parks, where machines are fewer.

Bring clean, recent dollar notes for permits and lodges. MTN Mobile Money covers small payments once you have a local SIM.

Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.

Safety all of Rwanda

Kigali is one of the calmest capitals in Africa: well policed, well lit on the main roads, and comfortable to walk by evening. The UK FCDO notes some bag-snatching and theft in the city, so the ordinary precautions apply. Plastic bags are banned and are confiscated at the airport, so pack in something else. On the last Saturday of the month, Umuganda — national community work — closes most services from 7am to 11am and empties the roads; plan to be still. The week from 7 April begins the national commemoration of the 1994 genocide, when the mood is sombre and music and events are subdued. The UK advice against travel covers only part of Rusizi District, in the far south-west, nowhere near the capital.

Our own assessment, not a sourced index.

Entry & visa Rwanda visa rules

Health & emergencies all of Rwanda

Required to enter

• Yellow fever certificate, but only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is present

Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.

Food tip

Brochettes — goat on a skewer with grilled plantain and pili-pili — are what a Kigali evening is built around, with a Primus or a Mützig. The lunch buffet, a plate piled from beans, isombe (cassava leaves), plantain and rice for a fixed price, is how the city eats at midday. The coffee is grown here and is very good. Tap water is not for drinking.

Nightlife

A small and sociable evening: brochettes and beer in garden bars, a few lounges with DJs, and live music at the weekend, spread across hills you cross by taxi.

• Kimihurura — most of the bars and lounges, close together
• Kiyovu — hotel bars and restaurants near the centre
• Nyamirambo — street-side brochettes and the liveliest local evening
• Kacyiru — restaurants and quieter bars

Closing: Weeknights wind down before midnight; at the weekend the lounges and clubs go on into the small hours.

Take a car rather than a moto home after drinking — the helmet does not make up for the hills in the dark.

Getting around

• Moto — the motorbike taxis are licensed, the riders wear numbered vests, and every one carries a helmet for the passenger, which you wear; agree the fare before you get on
• Taxi — the cars cost several times a moto and are what to take after dark or with bags; hotels and apps will call one
• Bus — the city buses run on a tap card, are cheap and orderly, and follow the main roads rather than the hills
• On foot — safe by day and by evening, but the city is all ridges and valleys, so a short distance on a map is often a long climb
• Airport: Kigali International (KGL) at Kanombe, 30 min to the centre

eSIM

A data eSIM for Rwanda, installed before you fly and working the moment you land:Works hereWorks here

Must-see

Nearby day trips

Say a few words

Kinyarwanda

• HelloMurahomoo-RAH-ho
• Good morningMwaramutsemwa-ra-MOOT-seh
• Good afternoon / eveningMwiriwemwee-REE-weh
• How are you? (news?)Amakuru?ah-ma-KOO-roo

Almost every Rwandan speaks Kinyarwanda, which is unusual in Africa and part of why the country feels so unified. English, French and Swahili are official too; English replaced French in schools in 2008, so the young answer in English and their parents often in French. A muraho before anything else is expected, not decorative.

Religion

Christian — Catholic, Protestant and Adventist

Overwhelmingly Christian: about four in ten are Catholic, and Protestant, Pentecostal and Seventh-day Adventist churches account for most of the rest, with a small Muslim minority. Sunday services are long, full and sung. Several churches, at Nyamata and Ntarama among them, are now genocide memorials, because people who sheltered in them in 1994 were killed there; they are visited as graves, quietly.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Greet before anything else — muraho, and a handshake that lingers; getting straight to business reads as cold
• Give and receive with the right hand, or with both, the left touching the right forearm
• Plan around Umuganda, the community work on the last Saturday morning of each month, when shops close and traffic largely stops until about midday
• Visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial early in the trip; it explains the country, and people will assume you have
• Follow the gorilla rules exactly: seven metres, no flash, an hour with the family, and no trek if you are ill

Don't

• Do not ask anyone whether they are Hutu or Tutsi; ethnic labels are avoided in public life, and promoting division is a crime
• Do not bring plastic bags — they have been banned since 2008 and are taken off you at the airport
• Do not litter or cross the road carelessly in Kigali; the city is famously clean and the rules are enforced
• Do not photograph police, soldiers or government buildings, or inside a memorial where signs ask you not to
• Do not treat the memorials as sightseeing; they are graves, and many of the guides lost family there