Rwanda

Rwanda's men reached January 2026 with a qualifier still to settle and settled it: the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Africa Sub-regional Qualifier A. The earlier marker of that climb came in 2011, when Rwanda beat Seychelles in the final of the ICC Africa Twenty20 Division Three and won promotion out of the division. Wins over the region's established sides took longer to arrive: the first against Kenya came on 19 April 2023, the first against Uganda that December, and Uganda remains the team's closest rival.

The women's side has kept pace. Fanny Utagushimaninde scored a century on her T20I debut, and the team went on to win the Nigeria Women T20 Invitational Trophy in 2022 and, the following year, the Kwibuka T20 Tournament, beating Uganda in the final on home soil.

Home soil means the Gahanga International Cricket Stadium in Kigali, opened in October 2017 by President Paul Kagame and built by the charity Cricket Builds Hope. Rubagumya captains the side now; Didier Ndikubwimana holds the team's run-scoring mark, Martin Akayezu its wicket-taking one, and Hamza Khan's 164 not out stands as the highest individual score recorded for Rwanda.

Charles Haba and other returnees, back in the country after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, set up the Rwanda Cricket Association in 1999 and took its first presidency. The ICC recognised the association as an affiliate member in 2003, before the team ever took the field.