Nyamirambo Women’s Center is a Rwandan NGO that was launched in late 2007 by 18 Rwandan women living near Nyamirambo in Kigali. Nyamirambo women came together and created a project that focused on addressing gender-based violence, discrimination, and gender inequality. The Nyamirambo Women Center’s mission is to promote education and vocational training for women who are unable to pay for their own training, with the aim of providing better employment opportunities for them.

By late 2013, Nyamirambo women's center had introduced a new product line called “Umutima,” which means “heart” in Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda. With the Umutima project, the Nyamirambo women's center started training and employing women from the local community in order to create a vast array of women’s accessories, home décor products, and children’s clothing. At the moment, the Nyamirambo women's center has more than 50 women employed by the Umutima project as seamstresses. The Umutima project and Nyamirambo women's center have developed a unique, self-sustaining model in which the profits earned from the Umutima project fund NWC initiatives, among others.

Nyamirambo Women's Center offers tourists a unique personal clue into the Rwandan culture, history, and daily life of the local people within the Nyamirambo community. All the tour guides at the Nyamirambo women's center grew up in Nyamirambo or live here now, and the Nyamirambo walking tour truly welcomes travelers into our homes. The profits earned from nyamirambo walking tours go back into the NWC and are used to pay seamstresses a fair wage and fund other local community initiatives, including free literacy classes, workshops on women’s rights, nutrition, and health, periodic sewing courses, library with afternoon programming for children, and English classes.

Nyamirambo walking tour

The Nyamirambo walking tour is popular for providing tourists with an on-foot experience. The tour begins at the Nyamirambo Women's Center with a traditional Rwandan snack and a first Kinyarwanda language lesson. Guides will introduce you to the Center and all of its activities. It then takes you to Nyamirambo, one of Kigali’s long-ago neighborhoods. Along the way, your guide will take you to a women's hairdressing salon where the daring can get high; they will give you a free braid; to a family compound to pound cassava leaves; to two mosques overlooking Kigali; and to the shop to look for the beautiful African fabrics being styled on the streets. The Nyamirambo walking tour ends with a traditional lunch cooked and served at the home of Aminatha, the Nyamirambo Women Center's best cook.