Rwakazina was overwhelmingly voted by the council, garnering 146 votes.
With 146 votes of more than 154 total vote casts, Marie Chantal Rwakazina was on Friday elected the next Mayor of Kigali City.
Mrs Rwakazina replaces Pascal Nyamulinda who resigned in April citing personal reasons.
Her sole competitor Herniette Murekatete got eight votes of the total votes casts when City of Kigali councillors convened to pick the next mayor.
Who is Rwakazina?
A look at Rwakazina’s credentials shows that her track record put her in contention to be the next mayor. Until currently, she worked with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a UN Coordination Analyst based in Kigali.
Previously she has been the Deputy Secretary General of the Rwandese Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA), an association of local government bodies, from 2011 to 2013. Before 2011, she was with the same institution as the head of capacity building.
She has also sat and still sits on different boards of directors including at the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) and High Education Council (HEC).
Between 2005 and 2008, she was head of the Department of Applied Statistics in the Faculty of Economics and Management at the former National University of Rwanda (NUR), now University of Rwanda. She was a university lecturer since 2008.
Rwakazina holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of Luxembourg.