Politics in Rwanda

Ten years after the genocide, a U.S.-based organization is playing a leading role in creating a representative government in Rwanda. Working with the Rwandan National Electoral Commission, the Academy for Educational Development helped to create a national voter database and designed fraud resistant voter registration cards.

A report from the Auditor General's office in Rwanda says that several government ministries and parastals were involved in irregular tendering procedures in 2002, causing the country to lose millions of dollars.

As Rwanda emerges from the shadow of the 1994 genocide where one million people were killed, President Paul Kagame turned to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help ensure efficiency and transparency in the country's upcoming elections.

Rwanda has beaten Sweden by getting the highest proportion of women into parliament, voting them on to 39 seats in the lower chamber of deputies, a level amounting to 48.8% of the seats. In the voting, which began on September 30, women won 15 of the seats that were also open to men.