École Antoine de Saint-Exupéry de Kigali École Antoine de Saint-Exupéry de Kigali The École Antoine de Saint-Exupéry de Kigali (EFASE), also known as the Kigali French School, is a school in Downtown Kigali, Rwanda. The school, with a capacity of 400 students, serves nursery ("maternelle") to upper secondary ("lycée") levels. The school was created in 1973. The school was closed from 1994 to 1998 due to deteriorated relations between the Governments of France and Rwanda following the Rwandan Genocide. In 2006, after France and Rwanda severed diplomatic relations, the Rwandan authorities forced the school to close. They gave a 72-hour deadline for the school to end
Kigali down near Kigali Airport. This was the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide, in which 500,000–1,000,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were killed in well-planned attacks on the orders of the interim government. Opposition politicians based in Kigali were killed on the first day of the genocide, and the city then became the setting for fierce fighting between the army (mostly Hutu) and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). On 8 April, Rwandan government forces attacked the RPF base in the parliament building from several directions, but RPF troops successfully fought back. The RPF then began an attack from the north