The flag of Rwanda was designed by Alphonse Kirimobenecyo and was adopted on October 25, 2001.
The flag has four colours: blue, green, and two forms of yellow (standard yellow for the middle band and what the Pantone system calls “sun yellow” for the sun).
The blue band represents happiness and peace, the yellow band symbolizes economic development, and the green band symbolizes the hope of prosperity. The sun represents enlightenment.
Rwanda’s previous flag was a red-yellow-green tricolour with a large black letter ‘R’ (to distinguish it from the otherwise identical Flag of Guinea). Derived from the flag of Ethiopia, the colours green, yellow and red represented peace; the nation’s hope for future development; and the people. The flag was changed because it had become associated with the brutality of the Rwandan Genocide.