From rural to urban in Rwanda

That is a theme of this piece by Nicholas Kulish in the New York Times, Rwanda Reaches for New Economic Model.  The lede follows:

On the 12th floor of the Kigali City Tower, a modern blue-glass office building on the side of one of this capital’s famous hills, the latest endeavor in the effort to transform a tiny rural economy into a financial and high-tech hub is trying to find its footing.

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Beneath the heights of Kigali City Tower, the rusty corrugated iron roofs on the ramshackle one- and two-story buildings below testify to the challenge of Rwanda’s goal: becoming a middle-income country. Beyond the city limits, an estimated 90 percent of the population is still employed in the country’s terraced green hills, growing bananas, sorghum, potatoes and other crops, much of it subsistence farming.

I was in Rwanda working as a gender consultant for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the fall of 1996.  The photo shown is from that time.  It was taken near Ruhengeri, as I hiked up to see the mountain gorillas one week-end.