Do you know how the University of Rwanda (UR) came into existence? Well, you might want to know that UR, called National University of Rwanda then, was born in Butare at a time when the word ‘university’ was just a tale to the ears of the Rwandan community.

According to Marius Dion, a former general secretary of the reign of the first rector, in 1962, Rwanda’s first president Grégoire Kayibanda approached the congregation of Dominicans that had joined the Rwandan community from Canada in 1960 and asked them to establish a university. With the cooperation of missionaries and government, the university was established in 1963 and was headed by Georges-Henri Lévesqueuntil 1978.

James Karera, one of the first students at the National university of Rwanda, says initially, the university which was being sponsored by Canada was divided into the faculties of Medicine, Social Sciences and Lattre which taught subjects such as English, French, History and Geography. A few years down the road, however, Canada stopped funding the university, an act described by some as a blessing in disguise because soon after, University de Gent of Belgium filled that gap. Consequently, Belgium spearheaded the establishment of law and agronomy, political sciences, social science, education science and economic science. According to records, the university had about 51 students then. However, the number of students has since grown to over 13,000.

During the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the university, too, was affected – it closed in 1994 and reopened in April 1995. At that time, English was introduced as a medium of instruction alongside French.

In 2013, it was merged with all public higher education institutions in Rwanda to form University of Rwanda.