Kigali, Rwanda

KIGALI, RWANDA | "Igihugu cy'Imisozi Igihumbi — Land of a Thousand Hills"

Kigali is the most quietly extraordinary capital in Africa. A city of one million people spread across the interconnected hills of the Rwandan central plateau, where the red laterite roads wind through banana plantations, the thousand hills roll to every horizon, and the deep equatorial green of the highland landscape creates a palette unlike anything else on the continent. Rwanda is the Land of a Thousand Hills, and Kigali is the city at the center of them — built across seven main hills in a topography where every street has a view and every neighborhood is defined by its hilltop position. The city has undergone one of the most remarkable transformations in the world since 1994, becoming the cleanest, safest and most efficiently governed capital in sub-Saharan Africa while preserving the extraordinary natural beauty of the highland landscape that surrounds it.

The colors are vivid and specific: the deep terracotta red of the laterite roads against the lush equatorial green of the banana plantations, the pale blue of the highland sky above the rolling ridgelines, and the warm amber of the hillside at golden hour when the light falls across the patchwork of tea farms, eucalyptus groves and red-roofed houses that covers every slope. It is a landscape that rewards looking at slowly.