Locating Rwanda and East Africa with Latitude and Longitude

1An address on the globe

Habimana finds a small label on the classroom globe: Kigali, 2° S, 30° E. "Why two numbers?" he asks. His teacher answers with a question: "If I tell you only that a village is on the road from Kigali to Huye, can you find it? And if I also tell you it is 20 km from Kigali?" Habimana grins. "Then I can find it exactly!"

2How to write a location

• Write the latitude first (north or south), then the longitude (east or west).
• Always add the letter: N or S for latitude, and E or W for longitude.
• Each degree is split into 60 smaller parts called minutes (′). For example, Kigali is at about 1° 57′ S, 30° 07′ E. To the nearest degree, that is 2° S, 30° E.

3Where exactly is Rwanda?

• From north to south, Rwanda lies between about 1° S and 3° S (more exactly, 1° 03′ S to 2° 50′ S).
• From west to east, it lies between about 29° E and 31° E (more exactly, 28° 52′ E to 30° 54′ E).
• So Rwanda is just south of the Equator. The Equator does not pass through Rwanda: it passes through Uganda, Kenya, Somalia and the DR Congo.
• The line of longitude 30° E runs right through Rwanda, very close to Kigali.

4East African cities on the grid

Here are some capital cities, rounded to the nearest degree:

5Reading the table like a map

• Kigali and Gitega have the same longitude (30° E), so Gitega is almost straight south of Kigali.
• Nairobi is further east than Kigali, because 37° E is a bigger number than 30° E.
• Juba and Mogadishu are in the Northern Hemisphere (N), while Kigali, Nairobi and Dodoma are in the Southern Hemisphere (S).
• Kinshasa is the furthest west of these cities (15° E).

Try it yourself