Go online and read about Rwanda for more than 5 minutes and I guarantee you’ll learn three things very, very quickly – Rwanda has been “completely transformed”, “plastic bags are banned” and “the streets are clean”. These observations are factually accurate and many Rwandans are rightly proud of them. However, there’s one other, perhaps less factual, phrase you are certain to brush up against should you make even the most cursory online search for all things Rwandan. Rwanda has apparently changed a lot of people’s lives. According to the latest search results, about 18,000 of them.

Which got me thinking… In this highly competitive region, has Rwanda changed more lives (at least on a superficial, basically meaningless, virtual level) than its neighbours? It turns out, for this completely unscientific survey, it has not. That honour goes to the larger neighbour to the north:

• Uganda – 23,900 lives transformed
• Congo – 20,500 lives transformed
• Rwanda – 18,000 lives transformed
• Tanzania – 17,500 lives transformed
• Burundi – 9,560 lives transformed

Let’s try and deal with any theoretical margin of error in my extensive research and mirror this across blogs. The results are slightly different, but there’s no change at the top of the table.

• Uganda – changed 1,762 lives
• Rwanda – transformed 1,104 lives
• Congo – altered 505 lives
• Tanzania – a little less at 467 lives
• Burundi – a paltry 85 lives

There you have it. Conclusive proof that if it’s the life changing East/Central Africa experience you’re after, Uganda is the place for you. But, you can forget about Burundi.

Photograph of downtown Kigali by kind permission of Rwanda Nziza