KIGALI, Rwanda -- Walking the streets of Rwanda's tidy capital, it's easy to forget that just 16 years have passed since this country's grisly genocide.
In this modern city of approximately 1 million, roads are smooth, sidewalks clean, and the crime, pollution and hassle of most African cities absent. Across Kigali, rising office towers reflect GDP growth that has averaged 8 percent over the last five years. In the countryside, though poverty remains rife, small-scale farmers have seen tangible benefits from the creation of cooperatives, increased use of fertilizers, a revival of the export coffee industry, and a unique system of terracing to prevent erosion of the country's sloping farmland.
Above all, in an ethnically divided nation where genocide survivors often live next door to their families' killers, Rwanda has avoided the return of systematic violence.