Early Life
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, one of the most influential women in Rwandan history, a Hutu, was born in 1953 in the village of Nyaruhengeri, some 140 km southeast of Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, to farming parents. Shortly after she was born the family emigrated from the border region of Butare to work in the Belgian Congo. Her father moved the family back to Butare when Uwilingiyimana was four. After success in public examinations she was educated at Notre Dame des Citeaux High School, and obtained the certificate to teach humanities at twenty.
In 1976 she received an A-level certificate in mathematics and chemistry; she became a mathematics teacher in a Butare social school. In the same year she married Ignace Barahira, a fellow student from her village. Their first child was born later in the year; they would go on to have five children.
When she was thirty (in 1983) she taught chemistry at the National University of Rwanda. This was financially possible because her husband obtained a University Laboratory post at twice the salary of a math teacher. She received a B.Sc. in 1985, teaching chemistry for four years in the Butare academic schools. Rwandan media was later critical of her scientific education, as it was thought that girls should not study science.
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