President Paul Kagame is embarking on an official visit to the Republic of Latvia – a country on the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Estonia – from October 1 to 3, foreign minister Amb Olivier Nduhungirehe announced on Monday, September 30.
As noted, it is the first official visit by a Rwandan President to the Baltic States, as well as the first official visit by an African President to the country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. During the visit, a memorial to honour the victims of the 1994 Genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi will be inaugurated at the National Library of Latvia ("The Castle of Light"), the minister noted in a post on X. This will be the first genocide memorial erected in the Baltic States and in Eastern Europe.
Latvia is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. AirBaltic, the flag carrier of Latvia, was founded in 1995, has its headquarters in Riga and flies to 68 destinations.
The politics of Latvia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic. The prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. The President holds a primarily ceremonial role as Head of State. Executive power is exercised by the government. Evika Siliņa, a Latvian lawyer and politician, has been serving as the prime minister of Latvia since September 2023. Latvia's long-serving [since 2011] foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics became President in July 2023.
Here are some other interesting facts about the country:
The Castle of Light
The Castle of Light is a unique building that is a physical shelter for books and a spiritual and emotional home for Latvian identity and society. Designated as the main venue for the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in Riga, the capital city, the prominent building is the home of the National Library of Latvia.
To mark its opening, in 2014, it is reported that 14,000 people formed a human chain to manually move several hundred books from the library’s former headquarters to its new home. These books now sit on The People’s Bookshelf – another of the building’s central design elements. The extraordinary bookshelf holds approximately 7,000 books in 50 languages from all over the world.
Population of 1.9 million on 64,589 square kilometers
Latvia, more than two times the size of Rwanda (26,338 square kilometers), covers an area of 64,589 square kilometers, with a population of 1.9 million.
Rwanda's population has reached 13,246,394 people according to the results from the fifth Population and Housing Census (PHC) conducted in 2022.
Latvia has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Balts and speak Latvian. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population; 37.7% of the population speak Russian as their native tongue.
Invented jeans
Tailor Jacob W. Davis, born Jākobs Jufess in Riga, emigrated to the US as a young man in 1854. In 1870, it is reported, he was asked by a customer to make a strong pair of trousers for her woodcutter husband – his creation would become the template for modern denim jeans, and two years later, with help from Levi Strauss, he patented the product.
Developed high-income country
Latvia is a developed country with a high-income, advanced economy ranking 39th in the Human Development Index (HDI), a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher level of HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher.
Love for basketball
Apart from ice hockey, in winter, it is reported that basketball is Latvia’s de facto national summer sport. Latvia has produced some of the world’s greatest, and tallest, female basketball players.
Notable Latvians include Uļjana Semjonova, a 6-foot 11-inch former basketball player who led TTT Riga to 12 consecutive European titles between 1964 and 1975. She was the first non-American woman to be inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame. It is reported that Semjonova played for almost all of her career with TTT Riga, winning the equivalent of the modern-day EuroLeague Women title 11 times.
Named Latvia's Most Popular Athlete 12 times from 1970 to 1985, she received the Lifetime Contribution to Sport award at the Latvian Sports Personality of The Year ceremony in 2007. That year, she was enshrined as a player in the FIBA Hall of Fame, following on from being the first non-US entry into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame back in 1993. The most famous living Latvian basketball players include Valdis Valters, regarded as one of the greatest players to have played the game in Europe in the 1980s, Ainars Bagatskis, a former professional basketball player and coach, who currently works as the head coach of CSO Voluntari of the Liga Națională, and Igors Miglinieks, a former Latvian professional basketball player and coach who played at the point guard and shooting guard positions.
Other top Latvian professional basketball players include Kristaps Porziņģis who plays for the Boston Celtics. Nicknamed "The Unicorn", he is listed at 7 ft 2 in and plays as a power forward and center. Another one, Andris Biedriņš, was drafted by the Golden State Warriors with the 11th overall pick in the 2004 NBA draft.