Tuscany in Africa

The pictures above are from a Sunday hike a little west of Butare.
Hills, warm and earthy colours, and cypress lookalikes give a perfect
impression of Tuscany in Africa. Potential for tourism? Maybe, but
remember that all the people here have neither electricity nor
drinking water without carrying it home.

Striking Similarity

The picture on the left is in Rwanda, somewhere between Cyangugu and Nyungwe forest. The picture on the right is in Canada, north of Toronto, taken two years ago. When I saw this lonely building, it immediately recalled the setting seen in Canada. I find the similarity striking. However, the green stuff in the Rwanda picture is tea (camelia sinensis), which would never grow in Canada.

Land Register

Rwanda does not have a land register (dt. Kataster/Grundbuch) but there are plans about creating one and pilot projects are underway. I got the chance to visit field work for such a pilot study and found a prime example of what is known as a Participatory GIS: out in the field parcel boundaries are determined and demarcated on aerial images (QuickBird) in collaboration with the owners of the land.


After that, the people meet in the shadow of a tree and administrative information (running number, name of owner, children, etc) is entered in a big book (a preliminary land register) and (rarely) into a special "dispute register" if there are disputes between land owners. These disputes, if they happen at all, concern almost exclusively the location of the boundary in the field or the ownership of a parcel, but never the mapping. It is amazing how well people recognise their fields on the QuickBird images. I tried it myself: it's surprisingly hard to orient in this open savannah-like land with a few singular trees and lots of banana groves.


How accurate is the result? Why not using GPS? That would be magic to the local people, whereas the aerial images they can understand. It's really a low-tech participatory GIS.

And what's the cadastre going to be used for? To raise taxes from those that don't have anything to spare anyway? Or just as a planning tool? I did not get answers to these questions; our host was responsible for the technical side. But he confirmed that the local land owners are not afraid of the project and collaboration is perfect. The cadastral pilot project is carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Lands, Environment, Forestry, Water and Mines (MINITERE) and funded by the British DFID.

Administrative Divisions

Speaking of administration, here is how Rwanda is administratively divided: 5 provinces North, South, East, West, and the capital, Kigali, are subdivided into 30 districts, which are further subdivided into sectors, then into cells, and finally, there is the Umudugudu or "village", which in an urban American setting would probably be called the "block." Here's the overview in all official languages:

English: Province > District > Sector > Cell > Umudugudu
Francais: Province > District > Secteur > Cellule > Umudugudu
Kinyarwanda: Intara > Akarere > Umurenge > Akagari > Umudugudu

Down to the Cell level, boundaries are known. The Midugudu (plural of Umudugudu), however, are not mapped, their boundaries are the local knowledge of their inhabitants and certainly of the Umudugudu chief.

Visa Renewal

Or: Red tape to fight corruption.

My visa for Rwanda had to be extended. The basic process is documented at the website of the Direction Générale de l'Immigration et de l'Emigration. The fee for a visa renewal is RWF 25000 (approximately CHF 50), you need an application letter, a passport size photo, a completed application form, and your passport. Locals advised me to write an application letter in the Director's name and have it signed (and stamed!) by the university's Vice Rector of Academic Affairs, together with my official invitation letter and terms of reference, for better chances to get through the process on the first attempt. Thanks for the hint, it worked perfectly!

What is not documented is this: You have to pay the fee at a branch of BCDI to an account that hopefully the clerk at the bank can tell you. Going to another bank is an error. The payment slip you are supposed to bring to RRA, the Rwanda Revenue Authority, who will exchange it for another snipped of paper that completes your application pack. Do not enclose 25000 in cash, that could be seen as bribery. Do also not attempt to pay 25000 directly at RRA, that could be seen as bribery too. If Rwanda is one of the least corrupt countries in Africa, then red tape is the price they pay for it. Not even directors of university research centers are allowed to have "petit cash," everything needs to go through the whole hierarchy...

By the way: I'd rather not know what harrassment a Rwandese citizen would have to suffer who wants to get/extend a visa for Switzerland...

Almost Paradise

This country is unbelievably beautiful. If you manage to abstract from Rwanda's poverty that's everywhere, you believe yourself in paradise. The pictures will do a better job than my description...

Lake Kivu,
seen from somewhere between Kamembe and Cyangugu.
The far side is Congo.

Tea gardens near Gisuma.
Tea (and coffee) is grown even on the steepest slopes.

Nyungwe Forest, still covering
a few hundred of Rwanda's "Thousand Hills"

Research Conference

On Nov 1-3, NUR held its fourth annual research conference. We at CGIS had again the honour to deliver the four speeches in the first session. That's honourable because it is immediately after the opening speech by the Honourable Minister of Education.

The opening ceremony was scheduled to start at 9h30. But the minister left Kigali only at 9h00, the trip from Kigali to Butare takes at least two hours, and the conference cannot start without the minister's opening speech. The rector would have had the power to decide otherwise, but he was in a meeting...

This gave us time to enjoy the magnificently decorated stage: huge, with a background of nicely pleated tissues in the country's colours (blue, yellow, green), a big table below an even bigger table cloth, and a miniature (compared to the stage) screen next to the lectern. And all that was topped with some country music.

At 11am, they arrived. The honourable minister of eductation and the rector (whose meeting seems to have finished just on time) stepped on stage. The rector's speech stressed the importance of research for the university and the minister stressed the importance of including students into research endeavours. The conference was held during the semester break. No students around. Probably unaware of this, she continued that "men in rose [prisoners, including professors] should not write the mémoirs for students". (By the way, most professors at NUR have a master's degree, some a bachelor, and few a PhD.)

Finally, the presentations. They were refreshing.