The culture of Rwanda is varied. Unlike many countries in Africa, Rwanda has been a unified state since pre-colonial times, populated by the Banyarwanda people who share a single language and cultural heritage. Music and dance are an essential part of Rwandan ceremonies, celebration, social gatherings and storytelling. The most well-known traditional dance is the umushagiriro, or cow dance, performed by women, the or dance of heroes, performed by men, and the drumming, also traditionally performed by men, on drums known as ingoma. Music is transmitted orally, with styles varying between the social groups.

Drums are of great importance; the royal drummers enjoyed high status within the court of the King (Mwami Drummers and the dance is usually played between seven and nine in number. Although the country has a growing popular music industry with very many musicians most of them are influenced by East African, Congolese, and American music. The most popular genre is hip hop, with a blend of rap, ragga, R&B and dance-pop.
 

Fractionally south of the Equator and with much of the country lying at altitude, Rwanda enjoys an agreeable tropical highland climate.
Temperatures vary considerably between locations, but vary little from month to month.
Peak temperatures rarely exceed 30°C (86°F) in the daytime or drop below 15°C (59°F) at night. Akagera is generally the warmest and the Virunga mountains the coolest.
The average daily temperature in Kigali is 21°C (70°F).
There are two rainy seasons in a year, from mid-February to May and mid-September to mid-December.
The dry season, from June to mid-September, sees light cloud cover and occasional light rainfall. The roads and paths tend to be easier to navigate in this period.

Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley, where the African Great Lakes region and East Africa converge. One of the smallest countries on the African mainland, its capital city is Kigali. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet "land of thousand hills", with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the east, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. Rwanda has a population of over 13 million living on 26,338 km2 (10,169 mi2) of land, and is the most densely populated mainland African country.

The population is young and predominantly rural. Rwandans are drawn from just one cultural and linguistic group, the Banyarwanda.