Juvénal Habyarimana (March 8, 1937 – April 6, 1994) was the third President of the Republic of Rwanda, the post he held longer than any other president to date, from 1973 until 1994. During his 20-year rule he favored his own ethnic group, the Hutus, and supported the Hutu majority in neighboring Burundi against the Tutsi government.^{[citation needed]} He was nicknamed "Kinani", a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible". On April 6, 1994, he was killed when his airplane, also carrying the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down close to Kigali International Airport. His assassination ignited ethnic tensions in the region and helped spark the Rwandan Genocide.

On July 5, 1973, while serving as Army Chief of Staff, Habyarimana seized power by overthrowing Grégoire Kayibanda and ousting the then-ruling Parmehutu party. In 1975, he created the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement as the country's only legal party. The government stayed almost entirely in military hands until 1978, when a new constitution was approved in a referendum. As a result, the MRND was reaffirmed as the official "State-party". Local administrations simultaneously represented the official party as well as the local authority. Legal and party policies were communicated and enforced from the Head of State down through the local administrative units, especially the general policy of Umuganda where Rwandans were required to “allocate half a day's labour per week” to infrastructural projects.