News stories by Aimable Twahirwa, page 5

When Callixte Munyabikari, a potato farmer from Gakenke in northern Rwanda, was rushed to a regional hospital after he fell ill with diarrhoea, he thought it was just a bad case of food poisoning.

At Kigali's Kibagabaga Hospital, 30 young people aged between 12 and 18 years old wait in a crowded holding room, waiting for their turn to see the doctor in charge of prescribing antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). They are among 220,000 children affected by AIDS who are benefiting from social and medical assistance from the Rwandan government and its development partners.

In an attempt to meet the development goal of universal access to primary education by 2015, Rwanda’s government has decided to reallocate a large part of its tertiary education budget to the primary education sector.

Two years spent training traditional birth attendants in remote rural areas has allowed Rwanda to reduce the country's maternal mortality rate, says the country's health department.

Joelle Nsamira Kajuga, a female agricultural researcher has a ready answer to describe which modified crop will produce a higher yield, which will be resistant to bacteria, and which will ensure food security and generate a higher turnover for poor small-scale farmers in different regions in Rwanda.

The vast majority of businesses in Rwanda - like elsewhere in Africa - are informal. Government expects that a drive to register an estimated 900,000 informal enterprises will both strengthen these businesses and improve tax revenues.

Eighteen-year-old David Kimenyi* is sure he infected his girlfriend with HIV. They had unprotected sex many times, even after he discovered he was HIV-positive.