TEAM Rwanda will ride the streets of Chepstow this week with the promise that they could become a top world power in the sport in future years.

Cycling has taken off in a big way in the African country which suffered terribly when, in 1994, over a million people were killed in a horrific genocide.

The national team made their debut in an international stage race, under the auspices of global governing body the UCI, last month when they competed in the Tour of Columbia.

Two of them, Joseph Alleluya and Camera Hakuzimana, reached the end 13-stage tour.

Team Rwanda will be making their road race debut at the Olympic Games in Rio next month when Adrien Niyonshuti, who rides for Team Dimension Data, the same team as British star Mark Cavendish, and who competed in the mountain bike discipline in London 2012, takes on riders who will have just completed the Tour de France.

The team will be riding in all three of the Abergavenny Festival of Cycling’s featured events - the Chepstow Grand Prix on Wednesday 13th July, the Welsh Open Criterium around the streets of Abergavenny on Friday 15th July and the big showpiece, the MotorPoint Grand Prix/Grand Prix of Wales road race on Sunday 17th July.

As Rwanda is known as the ’Land of a Thousand Hills’, with altitudes up to six thousand feet, climbing on a bike up the often stiff gradients of Monmouthshire will present no problems for the African aces.

The Under-23 tour to Britain, said the team’s UK Ambassador Jeremy Ford, is aimed at giving the Rwandans racing experience.

He said: "They are incredible climbers. They just fly up the hills and part of this trip is to train them on going downhill and racing in groups.

"Our guys are higher up on the UCI level than those who they will be riding against in the UK."

Ford added: "The team was started in 2006 when some incredible raw talent was discovered at a race for wooden bikes.

Tom Ritchey, legendary American rider and bike frame pioneer, was invited to be a judge and saw the talent and took it on from there."

Team Rwanda was born from those roots in 2007 and now, Ford believes, can go from strength to strength.

American pro cyclist, and the team’s Head of Performance, Sterling Magnell said: "We are heading to the UK to face the challenge of turning our best young Rwandan talent, who possess world class pedal power, into cornering and close quarters racing masters.

"This is the biggest gap in our riders’ cycling education and I hope that the skills gained in the UK will translate into their power being better utilised in the high level international events where they can prove their panache to the world and get on the radar of professional teams."