Tourists mark your calendars: It’s time to name the gorillas!

The Rwanda Development Board’s (RDB) Tourism and Conservation Department has just confirmed that their annual Festival of the Gorillas, Kwita Izina, will this year take place on September 5, instead of the hitherto usual date in the second half of June.

The week-long conservation festival, with events from Kigali to often key tourism locations in the country, usually ends with a grand function in Kinigi near the park headquarters of the Volcanoes National Park with the naming of newborn gorillas, each of whom is named by invited guests and then “followed” for life by the park administration.

Hundreds of additional visitors from around the world stream to Rwanda every year for this event to witness, applaud, and support the country’s extraordinary conservation efforts and either before the main event or afterwards then track gorillas but also visit other parts of the country. The shores of Lake Kivu are just an hour’s drive from Musanze, the town nearest to Kinigi, and from there the islands and forests of Gishwati and Nyungwe can be explored.

RDB’s corporate communications department will in due course release the program for the 2015 Kwita Izina Festival which will include sporting and conservation events and, perhaps the launch of new tourism products Rwanda is planning to introduce at that time.