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Rwanda has closed over 10,000 evangelical churches for failing to comply with a 2018 law designed to regulate places of worship. The law introduced new rules on health, safety, and financial disclosures, and requires all preachers to have theological training.
President Paul Kagame has been vocal in his criticisms of the evangelical churches that have sprouted across the small country in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
“If it were up to me I wouldn’t even reopen a single church,” Kagame told a news briefing last month.
The vast majority of Rwandans are Christian, according to a 2024 census, and many now travel long, costly distances to find places to pray.
Observers say the real reason for the closures is control
The 2018 law requires churches to submit annual action plans stating how they align with “national values”. All donations must be channelled through registered accounts.
Pastor Sam Rugira, whose two church branches were shut down last year for failing to meet fire safety regulations, said the rules mainly affected new evangelical churches that have “mushroomed” in recent years.
But Kagame has described the church as a relic of the colonial period, a chapter of its history that the country is still grappling with.
The closure of Grace Room Ministries came as a shock to many across the country. Pastor Julienne Kabanda had been drawing massive crowds to the shiny new BK Arena in Kigali when the church’s licence was revoked.
The government had cited unauthorised evangelical activities and a failure to submit “annual activity and financial reports”.
But some say the clampdown on places of worship is linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which around 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered.
