Man who helped open Rwanda’s roads

Almost 50 years ago, a Japanese man travelled to Rwanda, a place he had never been, with a mandate to rebuild an economy on the verge of collapse. This foreigner was Masaya Hattori (1918-1999), who served for six years as the governor of the National Bank of Rwanda.

Rwanda is known as “the land of a thousand hills,” and the capital of Kigali is in the midst of a construction boom, though farmers can still be seen harvesting bananas and beans on its outskirts.