Kigali Gisaka. By playing these neighbours against each other, the early kingdom flourished in the area, expanding westwards towards Lake Kivu and taking the Kigali area in the process. In the late 16th or early 17th centuries, the kingdom of Rwanda was invaded by the Banyoro and the kings forced to flee westward, leaving Kigali and eastern Rwanda in the hands of Bugesera and Gisaka. The formation in the 17th century of a new Rwandan dynasty by mwami Ruganzu Ndori, followed by eastward invasions and the conquest of Bugesera, marked the beginning of the Rwandan kingdom's dominance in the area. The
Kigali it remained a relatively small city until the 1970s due to government policies restricting rural-to-urban migration. The population reached 115,000 by 1978, and 235,000 by 1991. The city lost a large fraction of its population during the 1994 genocide, including those killed and those who fled to neighbouring countries. From 1995, however, the economy began to recover and large numbers of long-term Tutsi refugees returned from Uganda. Many of these refugees settled in Kigali and other urban areas, due to difficulty in obtaining land in other parts of the country. This phenomenon, coupled with a high birth rate and increased