La résilience du Rwanda aux chocs des années 1990 : Une perspective démographique

Abstract

Rwanda is one of African countries which suffered the most from political crises since independence, especially during the 1990-1999 period, culminating with the 1994 genocide. Consequences of these crises on economic, demographic and public health parameters are numerous: decline in income per capita, increase in child mortality, decline in level of education, and lower female adult height.
However because of a large scale effort to restructure the state, and because of massive international aid, the country was able to recover virtuous trends after year 2000: economic growth, lower underfive mortality, and continuous fertility decline. In contrast, the crisis left a durable impact on the level of education, and on female adult height, because women who were not in school or who were malnourished during the crisis period did not have the capacity to recover. The study of the situation of Rwanda reveals therefore what can be recovered (mostly period effects), and what is lost for ever (mostly cohort effects) after a severe crisis.