The largest contributor to Kigali's gross domestic product is the service sector, but a significant proportion of the population works in agriculture including small-scale subsistence farming.

[5] Rwandan scholar Alexis Kagame, who did extensive research into the country's oral history and traditions,[6] wrote that the name Kigali came into use after King Cyilima I Rugwe completed a conquest of the area.

[18] The founding of Kigali is generally dated to 1907, when German administrator and explorer Richard Kandt was appointed as the first resident of Rwanda, and established the city as the headquarters.

[25] He chose to make his headquarters in Kigali due to its central location in the country,[26] and also because the site on Nyarugenge Hill afforded good views and security.

[32] Belgian forces took control of Rwanda and Burundi during World War I, with Kigali being captured by the Northern Brigade led by Colonel Philippe Molitor on 6 May 1916.

[36] An agricultural-labour shortage caused by the recruitment of locals to assist the European armies during the war, the plundering of food by soldiers, and torrential rains which destroyed crops, led to a severe famine at the start of the Belgian administration.

[49] Businesses closed for a few days, and troops patrolled across the city,[50] but the coup was bloodless and life continued as normal, historian Gérard Prunier describing the reaction as "widespread popular relief".

[66] The development has been accompanied by forced eviction of residents in informal housing zones, however, and groups such as Human Rights Watch have accused the government of removing poor people and children from the city's streets and moving them to detention centres.

Kigali's central business district (CBD), sometimes known by the Kinyarwanda term mu mujyi ("in town"), is on Nyarugenge Hill and was the site of the original city founded by Richard Kandt in 1907.

[5] The CBD is situated towards the western edge of the built-up area,[26] as the terrain to the east was more suitable for development of the expanding city than the high slopes of Mount Kigali to the west.

Several of Rwanda's tallest buildings, including the 20-storey Kigali City Tower, are located in the CBD, as are the headquarters of the country's largest banks and businesses.

Travel publisher Rough Guides described Nyamirambo in 2015 as "Kigali's coolest neighbourhood", citing its multi-cultural status and an active nightlife, which is not found in much of the rest of the city.

The higher part of Kiyovu, to the south of main road KN3, has been home to wealthy foreign residents and Rwandans since colonial times, with large houses and high-end restaurants.

[93] The lower part of Kiyovu, north of the main road, consisted until 2008 of informal settlements that had formed after independence, when strict residence rules were relaxed.

According to a report by the Strategic Foresight Group, change in climate has reduced the number of rainy days experienced during a year, but has also caused an increase in frequency of torrential rains.

[107] It grew considerably after being named as the independent nation's capital,[47] although it remained a relatively small city until the 1970s due to government policies restricting rural-to-urban migration.

[110] This phenomenon, coupled with a high birth rate and increased rural-to-urban migration,[65] meant that Kigali reattained its previous size quite quickly and began to grow even more rapidly than before.

[nb 1] The Rwanda Environment Management Authority hypothesised that the high male-to-female ratio was due to a tendency for men to migrate to the city in search of work outside the agricultural sector, while their wives remained in a rural home.

A 2015 working paper by the World Bank Policy Research unit used the amount of light visible at night in different regions as a proxy for relative gross domestic product (GDP), and found that the three districts of Kigali represented 42 per cent of Rwanda's total night-light output.

[121] Another 2015 World Bank study measured the total turnover of registered companies in the country, as reported to the Rwanda Revenue Authority, and found that 92 per cent of these were from the city of Kigali.

[120] Challenges for the sector include the high cost of importing raw materials into a land-locked country, as well as substandard infrastructure and a lack of skilled workers.

[144] Under the previous system, in effect since 2002, power was significantly devolved to the districts which were led by their own mayors, managing infrastructure and levying taxes, around 30 per cent of which were passed to the city-wide authority.

[156][157] The United States government's Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) praises the RNP's professionalism, but notes that it lacks specialist skills in dealing with policing tasks such as investigation, counter-terrorism, bomb disposal, and forensics.

[159] In a 2015 interview with The New Times, then-commander of the central division Rogers Rutikanga cited "efficient operations and daily surveillance" as the means by which the city was policed.

For those reliant on subsistence agriculture, local staple foods include bananas, plantains (known as ibitoke), pulses, sweet potatoes, beans, and cassava (manioc).

Early colleges such as the Nyakibanda Major Seminary, founded in 1936, and three 1960s establishments including the National University of Rwanda (UNR), were all located in the southern city.

[193] In 2013, the government implemented significant changes in the country's public university system, intended to improve efficiency by removing duplicated courses of study and eliminating discrepancies in student assessment between the different schools.

[225] The Rwandan government has increased investment in the transport infrastructure of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, with aid from the United States, European Union, Japan, China, and others.

[270] The government has devolved the financing and management of healthcare to local communities, through a system of health insurance providers called mutuelles de santé.

[289] A number of newspapers are published in Kigali, including The New Times, the country's largest English-language publication, La Nouvelle Relève, in French, and Kinyarwanda papers such as KT Press and Imvaho Nshya.