Peace Without Poison

The low incidence of contraceptive use shows that Rwanda’s drop in fertility from 8 to 4.5children per woman in fourteen years cannot possibly be attributed to contraceptives since theywere used by no more than 10% of women in the 1980s, 20% in the 1990s, and an average of30% in the first decade of the 21 st century.Key to Rwanda’s depopulation effort is its current President, Paul Kagame, who assumed theoffice in 2000, but who was Rwanda’s de facto leader from 1994 to 2000 when he served as VicePresident and Minister of Defence. His key role, however, started even earlier, in 1990, whenRwanda’s total fertility rate began to decline, and when Kagame was in control of the RwandanPatriotic Front (RPF) forces that invaded Rwanda and triggered the civil war that culminated inthe 1994 genocide.Rwanda is beginning to see modest per capita GDP growth due to its effort to reduce fertility.Rwanda is in the second stage of the demographic transition.684 | P a g e