[4] After success in public examinations[5] she was educated at Notre Dame des Cîteaux Secondary School, and obtained the certificate to teach humanities in 1973.
[4] In 1986 she created a Soriority and Credit Cooperative Society among the staff of the Butare academic school, and her high-profile role in the self-help organization brought her to the attention of the Kigali authorities, who wanted to appoint decision makers from the discontented south of the country.
[7] As education minister, Uwilingiyamana scrapped the academic ethnic quota system, instead distributing public school spots and awards on the basis of open merit.
This came in the midst of the Rwandan Civil War of 1990–94, and earned her the enmity of the Hutu extremists, as the quota system had favoured Hutus.
"[12] The Habyarimana–Uwilingiyimana government had the daunting task of successfully completing the Arusha Accords with the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), the Tutsi-dominated guerilla movement.
[13] President Habyarimana officially dismissed her as prime minister on 4 August 1993, but she stayed on in a caretaker capacity for eight months, until her death in April 1994.
From Habyarimana's death until her assassination the following morning (approximately 14 hours), Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda's constitutional head of state and of government.
In his book Me Against My Brother, Scott Peterson writes that the U.N. troops sent to protect Uwilingiyimana were castrated, gagged with their own genitalia, and then murdered.
"[16][17] In his book Shake Hands with the Devil, U.N. commander Roméo Dallaire writes that Uwilingiyimana and her husband surrendered themselves to save their children, who stayed hidden in the adjoining housing compound for employees of the United Nations Development Programme.
The children survived and were picked up by Captain Mbaye Diagne, a UNAMIR military observer, who smuggled them into the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
Major Bernard Ntuyahaga was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the murder of Uwilingiyimana and the U.N. peacekeepers, but the charges were dropped.
[22][23][24] Uwilingiyimana is remembered as a pioneer in women's rights and education in Rwanda, and her efforts to reconcile ethnic differences in the country.
As a memorial to the late Rwandan Prime Minister, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) established The Agathe Innovative Award Competition.