The flag of Rwanda

Rwanda

Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

was adopted on October 25, 2001.

The flag has four colour

Color

Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...

s: blue

Blue

Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

, green

Green

Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...

, and two forms of yellow

Yellow

Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...

 (standard yellow for the middle band and what the Pantone

Pantone

Pantone Inc. is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, USA. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System , a proprietary color space...

 system calls "sun yellow" for the sun). The blue band represents happiness and peace, the yellow band symbolizes economic development, and the green band symbolizes the hope of prosperity. The sun represents enlightenment. The new flag represents national unity, respect for work, heroism, and confidence in the future. It was adopted to avoid connotations to the 1994 genocide

Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...

.

The flag was designed by Alphonse Kirimobenecyo.

Previous flag

Rwanda's previous flag was a red-yellow-green tricolour

Tricolour

A tricolour is a flag or banner more-or-less equally divided into three bands of differing colours...

 with a large black letter "R

R

R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R...

" (to distinguish it from the otherwise identical Flag of Guinea

Flag of Guinea

The flag of Guinea was adopted on 10 November 1958.- History :The colors of the flag were adapted from those of the Rassemblement Democratique Africaine, the dominant movement at the time of independence. The colors were in turn derived from those of Ghana, which had first adopted them in 1957...

). Derived from the flag of Ethiopia

Flag of Ethiopia

The flag of Ethiopia is a flag that was adopted on February 6, 1996. It conforms to the specifications set forth in article 3 of the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia. The three traditional colours date back to Emperor Menelik and were first used in a flag in 1897...

, the colours green, yellow, and red represented peace; the nation's hope for future development; and the people. The flag was changed because it had become associated with the brutality of the Rwandan Genocide

Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...

.