National Archives of Rwanda

The National Archives of Rwanda is located in Kigali. The earliest documents held in the Rwandan archives are from the 1890s. However, in 1959, as Belgium's imperial project was dissolving, most documents from Rwandan and German colonial rule that were held in Kigali were transferred to an archive in Usumbura, Burundi, which was also a Belgian colony at the time.[1] A presidential decree formally established a government archive in 1979. The Rwanda Archives and Library Services Authority was established by the Law in 2014.[2]

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History of Rwanda
Kingdom  ?–1962 German East Africa 1885–1919 Rumanura famine 1916–1918 Belgian mandate (Ruanda-Urundi) 1922–1962 Revolution 1959–1962 Republic of Rwanda 1962–present Bugesera invasion 1963 Coup d'état of 5 July 1973 Civil War 1990–1994 Genocide 1993–1994 First Congo War 1996–1997 Second Congo War 1998–2003 COVID-19 pandemic 2020–present

The archives were damaged during the violence of the Genocide against the Tutsi of 1994, and efforts to rebuild them did not begin until the 2000s. In 2013, the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a non-profit human rights group called Aegis to preserve documents related to the 1994 genocide. In January 2016, Aegis announced that a group of volunteers has been arranged to index 1.8 million documents in the archives' holdings.[3] Some of these documents have now been made available online through the Ministry of Sports and Culture's website, but few documents from pre-genocide independent Rwanda are included.[4]

According to the archives' official webpage, most of their holdings consist of: --Correspondence—Reports and Minutes—Letters—Procès-verbal—Telegrams—Action Plans—Travel Clearances—Memorandums—Communiqué—Organigrammes—Judicial Files—Projects—Diplomas—Certificates—Decisions—Invitations—Penal Code—Finance and Accounting