The Rwanda National Herbarium (NHR) was founded in 1965 by Belgian botanist Paul Deuse to curate Rwanda’s flora and fungi, with a focus on the Albertine Rift region. It reached more than 20,000 preserved specimens, while roughly 65,000 sheets are still outside the country. NHR later joined the Index Herbariorum, linking it to the directory of thousands of herbaria. A new phase began in 2020 when a SEPD2 grant launched barcoding and digitization, and staff published label data online. Between 2020 and 2025, the collection was given to the University of Rwanda, Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management, based in the College of Science and Technology. Nowadays, all sheets are photographed, georeferenced, and the collection is equipped with air conditioning. This transformation positioned NHR to appraise and document a collection representing 207 families, 965 genera and 2,157 species, and to share Rwanda’s botanical heritage with researchers and the public. It serves as an area of study for both academic and professional interns. In addition, students and researchers use the collection for studies in plant diversity, plant ecology and pharmaceutical studies.
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