This study analyses the needs, hopes and agency of older people in Rwanda in the context of a planet that will soon have more older people than under 16s and a nation where the number of over 65 year olds is set to increase threefold to fivefold in the next 20 years. The research makes a small, though new contribution to a relatively scarce literature on ageing in sub-Saharan Africa where theories and practices of development, investment and change have traditionally focused either on younger age cohorts or immersed the ‘greying’ of development challenges, if at all, in a more generic language of ‘vulnerable adults’.