Senator Donatille Mukabalisa, who spent more than a decade as Speaker of Rwanda’s Chamber of Deputies, died on Thursday, 30 July, at King Faisal Hospital in Kigali, where she had been receiving treatment.
Her death comes less than a year after she returned to the Upper House.
Mukabalisa completed her two-term limit as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies in 2024 and stepped back from that role, only to be designated a senator by the National Consultative Forum of Political Organisations in September 2024, a move that kept her inside Rwanda’s legislative architecture even after she left the chamber she had led since 2013.
Her passing closes out a political career that traces much of Rwanda’s post-genocide institutional rebuilding. Mukabalisa entered public life in 2000 as a member of the Rwanda National Transitional Assembly, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2003, and moved between the Senate and the Chamber twice over the following two decades, a rare trajectory in a system where most legislators stay in one chamber.
She built her early career outside politics entirely, spending 16 years with the United Nations Development Programme and working with the World Health Organization before turning to law and eventually to elected office as a member of the Liberal Party, which she went on to lead.
For a country still working through gender representation at the top of government, her tenure as Speaker, one of the longest of any Rwandan legislator, male or female mattered beyond party lines.
Parliament has not yet announced funeral arrangements or a mourning period, and neither chamber has said whether sittings scheduled for the coming days will be affected.
Given her seniority and her standing as a former Speaker, a state-linked send-off and formal tributes from the Chamber, the Senate, and the Liberal Party are likely in the coming days, alongside condolence messages from regional legislative bodies such as the East African Legislative Assembly, where Rwanda’s Parliament has long been active.
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