
Map showing Ruhengeri Province
Ruhengeri Province (or
Ruhengeri
Prefecture) was one of the twelve
provinces of Rwanda until the end of
2005, when boundaries were redrawn to create five
multiethnic provinces.
The province was in
the north of the country, bordered to the north by Uganda and to the northwest by the Democratic
Republic of Congo
. It consisted of 10 districts.
It had an area of 1,651.2
square
kilometres, of which 1,439.2 are considered habitable.
The region
is mountainous, and includes the 4,507-meter dormant volcano,
Mount
Karisimbi
.
The 2002 census counted 891,498 people in the province, including
475,424 women and 416,074 men, making Ruhengeri the most populous
province of Rwanda, with 11% of the nation's population. It was the
fourth most populous province at the time of the 1991 census, which
counted 769,297 people, and the fourth most populous in the 1978
census, which counted 531,927.
The 2002 census found that the
mean age of the
province's population was 20.3 years, while the
median was 15.8 years.
Most of the
inhabitants, 819,987 people, were living in rural areas, with
71,551 in urban areas like the city of Ruhengeri
. There were 29,286 urban residents counted
in 1991, and 18,942 counted in 1978.
Notes