Eastern Province ( rw, Intara y'Iburasirazuba; french: Province de l'Est; nl, Oostelijke Provincie) is the largest, the most populous and the least densely populated of

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

's five provinces. It was created in early January 2006 as part of a government decentralization program that re-organized the country's local government structures. It has seven districts:

Bugesera Bugesera is a district (''akarere'') in Eastern Province, Rwanda. Its capital is Nyamata. The district is the location of two memorial sites of the Rwandan genocide at Ntarama and Nyamata. Geography Bugesera comprises areas south of Kigali, ...

Gatsibo Gatsibo is a district (''akarere'') in Eastern Province, Rwanda. Its capital is Kabarore. It lies in the sectors of Gatsibo and Kageyo. It’s at about 1 hour and 50 minutes drive from Kigali city. Geography The district comprises areas in t ...

, Kayonza, Ngoma, Kirehe, Nyagatare and Rwamagana. The capital city of the Eastern Province is Rwamagana. The Eastern Province comprises the former provinces of Kibungo and

Umutara Until January 2006, Umutara Province was one of the 12 provinces (''intara'') of Rwanda. However, due to local government reorganization, this area is now part of the new larger Eastern Province. The old province was situated in the north-east ...

, most of

Kigali Rural Kigali-Rural Province, known in Kinyarwanda as Kigali-Ngali, was a province that surrounds the city of Kigali, Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Centra ...

, and part of Byumba. The Akagera National Park is situated is this province.

History

It is not known when the territory of present day Rwanda was first inhabited, but it is thought that humans moved into the area following the last ice age either in the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

period, around ten thousand years ago, or in the long humid period which followed, up to around 3000 BC.Briggs and Booth 2006 p6 Archaeological excavations have revealed evidence of sparse settlement by hunter gatherers in the late

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...

, followed by a larger population of early

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

settlers, who produced dimpled

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...

and iron tools. By the 17th century it is thought that most of Rwanda was inhabited, with a fairly even spread of population across the hills of the country.Vansina p16
/ref>

List of the Eastern Province Districts by Population (2012)

Notes and references

Cited texts

* Briggs, Philip & Booth, Janice (2006) ''Rwanda - The Bradt Travel Guide''. 3rd ed. London: Bradt Travel Guides. * Chrétien, Jean-Pierre (2003) ''The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History'' Hardcover ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Dorsey, Learthen (1994) ''Historical Dictionary of Rwanda''. Scarecrow Press. * Ministry of Local Government, Republic of Rwanda (MINALOC):
Eastern Province
. ''Performance contracts in Year 2009-2010 (July 2009-June 2010)''. Accessed 2010-03-11. * Munyakazi, Augustine & Ntagaramba, Johnson Funga (2005). ''Atlas of Rwanda'' French ed. Oxford: Macmillan Education.

Area calculation

* Pixel sizes for provinces taken from traced maps:

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

= 28,547; East = 81,548;

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

= 50,844;

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...

= 51,798;

Kigali Kigali () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is near the nation's geographic centre in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. As a primate city, Kigali has been Rwa ...

= 6,129 * Total Pixel size for Rwanda = 28,547 + 81,548 + 50,844 + 51,798 + 6,129 = 218,866 * => Eastern Province % of total area: 81,548 / 218,866 = 37.26% * Total area of Rwanda = **
Rwanda
. ''The World Facebook''. United States Central Intelligence Agency. 4 March 2010. Accessed 11 March 2010. * => Area of Eastern Province = x 37.26% =

External links

Eastern Province official website
{{Coord, 1, 45, S, 30, 30, E, display=title, region:RW_type:adm1st_source:GNS-enwiki Provinces of Rwanda States and territories established in 2006