How Kigali's creativity is helping the Rwandan capital step into the limelight

A gorilla looms above me, mouth frozen in a perpetual roar. Its fanged teeth catch the midday sun, and hands that look powerful enough to scoop up a person, King Kong style, hang at its sides. It’s my first morning in Rwanda and my first gorilla sighting — although all is not quite as it seems.

Each year, around 35,000 travellers venture into the misty mountains of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park to see the real deal, but I’m standing in the country’s capital, Kigali. The giant towering over me isn’t flesh and fur but a clanking metal sculpture fashioned from discarded motorcycle parts and rusted chains. And rather than the damp, earthy scent of the jungle a three-hour drive to the north, I’m met with the aroma of freshly roasted coffee drifting from a nearby cafe.

Wearing jeans and a baseball cap, the installation’s creator, Aimable Kigenza, stands smiling at the entrance to the Niyo Arts Center. The gallery’s outer walls and driveway erupt in swirling murals of bright, joyful colour. It’s an ever-shifting canvas, repainted after the biannual rainy seasons, when the downpour leaves the city spotless once more.

Until recently, most travellers to Rwanda would quickly pass through Kigali, not just to the nothern jungles to see mountain gorillas, but also east, to Akagera National Park for a Big Five safari. Yet, the blossoming of an energetic arts scene is persuading visitors to press pause and take the creative pulse of Kigali before heeding the call of the wild.

Home to around 1.7 million people, the capital sits in a verdant basin, its skyline framed by rolling hills and jacaranda trees that wash the city in a soft violet haze from September to November.

There’s a symbiotic relationship between rising tourism and the emergence of contemporary art and design in Rwanda, Aimable explains. “As the country develops, tourism and hospitality are giving new opportunities for artists to make a living from selling their work,” he says.

Since opening in 2014, Niyo Arts Center, where Aimable works and exhibits, has become a linchpin of this scene. The gallery also operates as a collective for more than 30 East African makers, complete with studio spaces. Its walls are lined with canvases depicting, among other things, a dazzle of abstract zebras, market squares packed with people, and children cocooned in fabric wraps on their mothers’ backs. A percentage of the centre’s profits helps support disadvantaged children, single mothers and survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Aimable was six years old during the genocide, in which as many as one million people are thought to have been killed over 100 days. Having lost family members and lived through the aftermath, his hope is that his silverback promotes a message of healing and redemption. “When I made it, I was thinking about Rwanda since the genocide,” he says. “Afterwards, there was nothing — no money, no means, just these scraps of metal from the things that had been used to kill us, left in the street. But from the ashes, this country has managed to rise up. There’s hope here now.”

Leaving Aimable and his symbolic sculpture, I travel a couple of miles south east across the city. Rush-hour traffic is limbering up and the streets hum with motorbike taxis. The ubiquitous bikes are the lifeblood of Kigali, used by everyone from school students riding pillion while scrolling on their phones to suited commuters clutching briefcases.

Waiting to greet me in the shaded courtyard of the Inema Arts Center is its co-founder, artist Innocent Nkurunziza. He’s wearing scholarly, round glasses, his long dreadlocked hair tied up in a loose topknot. Innocent guides me around the two-storey gallery, which opened 13 years ago in a former ambassador’s residence. Today, it showcases the work of 10 local artists, including Innocent’s, and is also home to a collection of rare Congolese masks, some dating back to the 13th century.

Like Aimable, Innocent has witnessed seismic shifts in Kigali’s cultural sphere since becoming an artist. “When I was starting out, there weren’t really stores here to buy art supplies, so I’d travel 10 hours by bus to Uganda just for paints,” he recalls. This necessity fostered a make-do attitude that still influences his work, prompting him to experiment with the abundant natural materials around him, like mud, clay and tree bark. Innocent unfurls his latest work: an 18-metre-long strip of brown bark, painted with a bubbling, vascular river, stretching the length of the gallery floor like a ceremonial carpet.

“We still don’t have a dedicated art school in Rwanda,” Innocent says. “But in a way that makes the work here rawer.” We take one last stroll through the gallery, where canvases painted by Innocent, some layering maps and vintage photos, capture the energy, resilience and creativity of Rwanda’s new generation of artists. “There’s a freedom of expression you can see in every piece here,” he reflects.

Food

My next stop, Choose Kigali, neatly merges the city’s burgeoning arts and food scenes. The upscale restaurant and art gallery perches on top of a hill in the smart Kiyovu neighbourhood. Viewed from the mansion’s wraparound balcony, Kigali spreads out like a patchwork quilt of labyrinthine streets, terracotta-coloured roofs and endless forested hills. The occasional construction crane and half-finished office block hint at a city in the midst of a building boom. But up here, all is serene. In gardens punctuated by large-scale art installations, the air is filled with the chirps of African paradise flycatchers.

Inside the grand old house, a maze of modern gallery spaces unfolds. Contemporary oil paintings line the walls and a sculpted elephant looms around one corner. Visitors may arrive for Choose Kigali’s rotating exhibitions, but it’s the creativity at the heart of the centre’s restaurant that keeps them here.

Pulling up a chair beside me in the garden, British-Filipino executive chef Mark Lawton tells me he fell in love with the landscape and fresh ingredients it produces when he arrived 18 months ago, after two decades working around the world. Having honed his skills in prestigious kitchens, including those at The Ritz and Claridge’s, Mark was keen to pair his classical European training with the hyper-local bounty sprouting on his doorstep.

To illustrate the point, he slides a plate of sashimi across the table, served with a medley of pineapple, mango and passion fruit grown on surrounding hillsides. The fish had been plucked that morning from the waters of Lake Kivu, straddling the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“Traditional Rwandan food is hearty and made for sharing, family style. It leans on paprika, plantain, vegetables and meats like chicken, goat and beef,” Mark explains as my next course arrives. The Kigali-reared longhorn beef is served three ways: a tender fillet, rich braised cheeks and slow-cooked ribs, accompanied by mashed potato blended with Rwandan plantain, giving it a silky texture.

Choose Kigali’s popularity with locals and international visitors alike reflects a culinary awakening that’s taken hold across the city. In recent years, the capital has also welcomed Kōzo, an Afro-Asian restaurant serving delicacies such as spring rolls infused with Rwandan Akabanga chilli oil; Nyurah, a high-end dining room combining African ingredients with French cooking techniques; and Ruä, offering inventive African small plates, served tapas style.

As we gaze at the surrounding hills, it’s hard to disagree when Mark says, “It feels like Kigali’s food scene is really having a moment.”

Fashion

Following winding hillside roads through the quiet neighbourhood of Nyarutarama, past grand embassy homes and manicured lawns, I arrive at House of Tayo, a hip atelier and men’s fashion boutique. Here, for my grand finale, I’m meeting a designer carrying Rwanda’s creative message to the global stage.

Inside, earth-toned walls and a bamboo-clad ceiling frame neat racks of sharply tailored jackets and boldly patterned shirts. It’s the vision of Matthew Rugamba, a designer of Rwandan heritage whose creative journey began thousands of miles away.

“I went to university in the US and when I told other students I was from Rwanda, they’d say, ‘I’m sorry,’” he recalls with a wry smile. “I didn’t understand that; I was proud of where I came from. But I also came to realise that art and design could be powerful tools for changing these perceptions.”

Matthew’s garments combine sleek modern tailoring with Rwandan motifs such as geometric weaves, draped contours and luminous flashes of kitenge (a traditional African fabric that bursts with colour and pattern). In the UK, Arsenal footballers have been photographed wearing his outfits and his pieces have also shimmered under the flashbulbs at the Hollywood premiere of Black Panther in 2018. Matthew also has a loyal following here in Kigali, he tells me. Indeed, his creations can be glimpsed across the city every Friday when office workers swap their suits for bright, locally made shirts — part of a growing movement to champion homegrown design.

“The concept of ‘made in Rwanda’ carries more weight these days,” Matthew says, smoothing a patterned lapel between his fingers. “That’s always been my dream, for people all over the world to be proud to wear clothing made here.”

As I step out of his boutique, late-afternoon light pools gold across the quiet street. Palm trees cast their long shadows over the tarmac as the sun skims low over Kigali’s hills. This is a city in the midst of reclaiming its story — and it’s artisans like Matthew who are showing that creativity could soon be joining the primates as one of Rwanda’s most compelling draws.