There was a moment when Jock Boyer realised just how much cycling talent there is in Rwanda. Boyer, once the first American to ride the Tour de France and now the first coach of the Rwandan national cycling team, was leading his team of professionals up a steep, winding hill.

The cyclists were kitted out in their official sky blue and banana yellow Team Rwanda shirts. They were riding brand new $4,000 bikes. As they climbed the hill, the group sped past men and women carrying plates of fruit or stacks of banana leaves on their heads. They overtook old, creaking lorries weighed down with goods bound for Congo. And they passed other cyclists: young men on rusting single-speed Chinese-made bikes huffing and puffing their way up the hill, often with loads of coffee or charcoal on the back.

One of the cyclists they passed was called Leonard, 6ft 6in tall and carrying 150lbs of potatoes. A couple of minutes after Boyer and the team passed him, Leonard reappeared at their side, keeping pace, "cranking away", as Boyer put it. The coach found Leonard the next day and invited him to a trial.

Rwanda has always been a country of cyclists. It is known as the land of a thousand hills, and every day each hill seems to hold a thousand cyclists delivering food and firewood, coffee and cassava. The bikes are rudimentary, some even made of wood. They are for business, not pleasure, and until recently certainly not for racing.

Like most African countries, Rwanda has never taken professional cycling seriously. Outside of South Africa there are just a handful of African cyclists on the professional circuit and not one has competed at the highest level, the Tour de France.

That may be about to change. Team Rwanda is this tiny central African country's first ever professional cycling team, and it has grand ambitions: competing in the 2012 London Olympics and, eventually, securing a place in Le Tour.

The Rwandans, who climb the country's thousand hills with ease on a diet of nothing but carbohydrates and fresh mountain air, could be just the team to polish the image of a sport tarnished by drug scandals.

First, Boyer needs to get them out of bed.

We're in Ruhengeri, a small town about an hour and a half's drive north of the capital, Kigali. It is one of Rwanda's main tourist spots, a place of volcanoes and gorillas. Dian Fossey set up her gorilla sanctuary here, and early every morning small groups of tourists leave their hotels and begin trekking up the side of a hill (everything here is either up or down a hill) in search of gorillas.

It is a cloudy morning. The peaks of the volcanoes are hidden and it is threatening to rain again. We had arranged to set off early the day before from Kigali with five members of Team Rwanda, but the rain was torrential. The riders are scattered across the country, but always meet in Kigali to ride up to the training camp together.

Only two riders, 21-year-old Rafiki Uwimana and Nyandwi Uwase, 25, made it to Kigali to begin the ride. They both turned back, while Boyer and I drove on to Ruhengeri, the team's base.

The following morning, Boyer is keen to get going with the training camp to prepare for three races in Africa: the Tour of Egypt, the Tour de Cameroon, and the Cape Epic in South Africa.

The five riders - Obed Ruvogera and Abraham Ruhumuriza, both 29, and 21-year-old Nicodem Habiyambere, as well as Rafiki and Nyandwi - were supposed to meet each other in Kigali at 8am and ride to Ruhengeri. It's 8.30am and Boyer has only just reached Rafiki on the phone.

Boyer hangs up and grins. "He's still in bed."

The idea for Team Rwanda was born in 2005. It was the year Tom Ritchey, a professional American cyclist in the 1970s and the man viewed by many as the inventor of the mountain bike, made his first visit to Rwanda.

Ritchey was stunned by the number of cyclists and the vital role the bicycle seemed to play in every day life. Most of the bikes he saw were basic "coffee bikes", with a long back seat built to carry bags of coffee beans from fields to factories.

The design was poor, Ritchey believed, and the quality of the manufacturing even worse. He set up Project Rwanda, a charity that would provide new coffee bikes designed by Ritchey to thousands of Rwandans. Ritchey also established an annual race, the Wooden Bike Classic, for which hundreds of Rwandans would come to race their wooden coffee bikes. Professional cyclists from Europe, the US and across Africa would also compete in a traditional road race on the same day.

The first race took place in September 2006, and Ritchey persuaded Boyer to help him organise it. Thousands of people turned up to line the streets and cheer the cyclists on. The level of interest and amount of Rwandan talent took the two Americans by surprise. Within a month they had decided to set up a national team.

"We didn't really have a plan," says Boyer, "or much money." But within six weeks they had held trials, selected riders and formed a team that was ready to enter the nine-day Cape Epic, the biggest mountain bike race in the world.

In the three years since, Team Rwanda has become an established fixture in African cycling. Two of its best riders, Adrien Niyonshuti and Nathan Byukusenge, have been picked up by the MTN team in South Africa, one of the strongest outfits in the continent.

For the riders though, success in the saddle is only one part of the story. "If I go outside the country and I am wearing this shirt," Rafiki says, tugging at his Team Rwanda jersey, "people will know about Rwanda for something else."

To most outsiders, Rwanda is little more than a byword for horror, a country known only for its genocide. More than 800,000 people were slaughtered in just three spring months in 1994. Tutsis and moderate Hutus were hacked to death by well organised and well financed machete-wielding mobs of Hutu extremists. Husbands killed wives. Priests killed those who sought sanctuary in their churches. Radio stations exhorted Hutus to exterminate the "cockroaches".

It was a holocaust carried out under the noses of a United Nations peacekeeping mission. The UN force was too small and its mandate too weak. Despite the best efforts of its Canadian commander, the UN force was unable to persuade the security council and the major powers - Britain, France and the United States - to send more troops.

Rwanda is a changed country today. President Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebel forces which eventually drove out the Hutu government, has transformed Rwanda into one of the growth economies in East Africa, as well as one of the most stable countries in an often volatile region. Kigali is a city with smart cafes, shiny shopping malls and busy restaurants. Identity cards, once used to distinguish Hutus from Tutsis, now just label everyone Rwandan.

Like everyone in Rwanda, all of the Team Rwanda riders were affected by the genocide. All were children at the time but many still have strong memories. Six of Adrien's brothers were killed. Nathan lost his father, as did Nicodem. Two of Obed's uncles and three of his brothers died.

When the genocide began, on 6 April 1994, Rafiki's parents decided to split the family up. If they stayed in one place they might all be killed; if they went their separate ways there was more chance that some would survive. Rafiki, then five years old, was sent from Kigali to live with his grandmother in a small village in eastern Rwanda. In the confusion following the end of the genocide, his parents heard that Rafiki and his grandmother had been killed. It was five years before the family was reunited.

Rafiki, slight and baby-faced, with the wisp of a goatee hanging off his chin, was in school, cycling for fun, when he tried out for Team Rwanda. "I never thought I could do this professionally," he says. His heart, he says, belongs to his bicycle - something he agrees his girlfriend may not want to hear. They have a child together; news of the birth was announced on a local radio station. "In Kigali everyone knows me. I am a star," he insists with a laugh. A star he may be but, the occasional lie-in notwithstanding, Rafiki also says he understands what it takes to become a champion.

He trains for three hours every day, up to five hours on Saturdays and Sundays. On his wrist he wears the yellow LiveStrong bracelet worn by Lance Armstrong. The return of the American to competitive cycling has got Rafiki excited. He daydreams about racing alongside Armstrong. In his dreams he can beat him. "When you want something you must be strong in your heart," Rafiki says. "You must be sure and I am sure."

Boyer is not so sure. The current six-man team is doing well, recording high finishes in African races, but Boyer doubts they are good enough yet to compete at the highest level. He expects stronger riders, perhaps including Leonard the potato delivery man, to come through.

He is already trying to prepare his riders for the moment when they are replaced by younger, fitter, better cyclists. Everyone will remain a part of the team, even if they are not racing. Some may open bicycle shops, others may become team drivers or coaches.

A place has already been found for one rider who didn't quite make the grade: Rambo, the security guard at the Team Rwanda compound in Ruhengeri. A picture of Rambo sits on the mantelpiece in the team house. He is wearing army fatigues, is holding an AK-47, and has a bullet belt slung over his shoulder. It is not for show. Before working for Team Rwanda, Rambo was a soldier in the Congolese army. Rambo, you might have guessed, is a nickname. He wasn't a good enough cyclist to make the team but considering his army background, Boyer thought he would make a good enough security guard.

By mid-morning the clouds have cleared and five members of Team Rwanda have begun the long and steep climb out of Kigali. We ride back from Ruhengeri on motorbikes and meet them halfway. Around 90 per cent of Rwandans earn their living from subsistence agriculture, and its importance, as we ride back towards the team base, is obvious.

Every conceivable spot of land appears to be farmed. Slopes that seem almost vertical are terraced and ploughed. Fields are full of men wielding hoes and women planting seeds. Everyone we pass is working on the land: a man placing dried banana leaves on the roof of a brick-built hut; an old woman, in need of a walking stick, yet balancing a sack of sweetcorn on her head; a mother carrying firewood on her head and a sleeping baby wrapped in cloth around her back.

The riders arrive at the team base, a four-room single storey brick house with a veranda and front garden, peppered with small trees and bushes. A couple of old wooden coffee bikes are propped up against the tree next to the small outhouse by the gate where Rambo stays.

As they shower ("the first proper shower they've had since the last training camp," says Boyer), a cook prepares lunch.

Training camps like this are one of the few opportunities Boyer has to bring the riders together to train properly. The six members of the A team and five juniors in the B team are scattered across Rwanda, most still living at home with their families. While Boyer knows they train every day, what he doesn't know is how much they eat. The $100-a-month salary Team Rwanda pays each rider is by far and away the largest income in each family. That money goes towards school fees for younger brothers and sisters, hospital charges for a sick aunt, and food for everyone.

Boyer would like to be able to pay them more, but money is tight. The entire operation is paid for by donations from foreigners, mainly Americans, and by a small amount of government funding.

The Rwandan cycling federation has given its full support to the project - the team has even been invited to dinner with President Kagame - but funds are still limited. Air travel to continental races eats up most of the money. Flights are expensive in Africa - outside South Africa there are no budget airlines. To take a team of five riders, coach and mechanic to the Tour of Egypt will cost Team Rwanda around $10,000.

Joining Team Rwanda has been something of a culture shock for the riders. Some of them had never been out of their own towns or villages before. Boyer, too, has had to adjust. He admits to knowing little about Africa, let alone Rwanda, before he came here three years ago. He is still getting used to his team's elastic concept of time. Planes have narrowly been missed, riders ambling towards the airport with less than half an hour before take-off.

"I got them all watches, thinking that might make a difference," Boyer says. "It made no difference at all."

Lunch is served. The riders pile their plates high with spaghetti, huge chunks of potatoes, tomatoes, onions, carrots and an omelette. I ask Rafiki how this compares to his normal lunch. He just giggles and shoves another potato in his mouth.

After lunch, Nyandwi and Rafiki sit in the shade on the step of the veranda and listen to American hip-hop, while the others take a nap. Nyandwi grew up not far from here, 60km up the road in Gisenyi, a town on the Congolese border. He still lives there but has been able to rent his own house, a simple two-room hut with dirt floors, not far from his mother's home.

Nyandwi left school at the age of 10 when the genocide started. He didn't go back once it ended. Instead he started working. By the time he was 13 he had raised enough money to buy a cheap bicycle, so he became a bicycle taxi rider. He would take people and goods back and forth across the border between Rwanda and Congo, earning around 7,000 Rwandan francs a week (then about £13), decent money for someone who left school so early.

His competitive streak, on display when he boasts to me that he is the best rider in Team Rwanda, was evident at an early age. Gisenyi held an annual race for taxi bikes. The first year Nyandwi entered, he won. He went on to win the next four before saving up to buy a proper road bike and entering the Tour de Rwanda. The first year, he came 20th, then eighth, and then third. That was the year Boyer came to Rwanda. Nyandwi was one of the first cyclists he tested. "It has changed everything for me," he says.

It has changed things for his family, too. Nyandwi's mother used to work, but following an illness that put her in hospital, she has been unable to support the family. Nyandwi's $100-a-month salary is spread across his five brothers and two of his sisters (the other three are married). "Everything in the family is me," he says.

Nyandwi, like the others in the team, struggled in a recent race in Gabon. The climate in Rwanda may be good for training (mountains, cool weather), but it is not the best preparation for races elsewhere in Africa. The heat and humidity of Gabon did not suit Team Rwanda. "It was hot," says Nyandwi. "No, it was very hot," emphasises Rafiki.

None of the riders was happy with his performance in Gabon. Rafiki and Nyandwi were the highest finishers, 29th and 30th respectively. They expect to do a lot better when the conditions better suit their strengths. That chance will come in November. The national cycling federation has succeeded in getting the Tour de Rwanda on to the international schedule this year, lending much-needed credibility to the race. Riders from Europe and the US are expected to compete, giving Team Rwanda the opportunity to test themselves against some of the world's best on their home turf.

Boyer is also hopeful that the Olympics qualification race for London 2012 will be held in Rwanda, something which will surely help his riders.

One of the original Team Rwanda cyclists, Adrien Niyonshuti, narrowly missed out on Beijing, finishing just outside the top five in the African qualification race. The Olympics dream is achievable, Boyer insists.

Getting a rider in the Tour de France will be a lot harder, but Boyer believes it could happen in the next five to 10 years. "The talent here is unbelievable," he says. "I know there are champions out there. I just need to find them."

Malaria, family illnesses and logistical problems affected Team Rwanda's performances in Cameroon, Egypt and South Africa. In the end the cost of flying the team to Cameroon proved too much and they had to cancel. Then two members of the team caught malaria right before the Tour of Egypt and the trip to South Africa for the Cape Epic.

Despite the problems the team still managed to put in good performances. Abraham finished 5th and 10th in two of the stages in Egypt, while Adrien, racing for MTN, came 12th in the Cape Epic.

"We are making good progress," says Boyer, "but it is frustrating." All the major teams have enough funding to train full-time - something that Team Rwanda can only dream of. "If I could get them at a training camp for a whole month before a race," says Boyer, before trailing off.

As the three-day training camp before Egypt came to an end, Rafiki and Nyandwi were sat on the veranda gently ribbing each other about who is best. The two men think Boyer has found his champion already - they just can't agree on which one of them it is.

What they do agree on though is how to define "champion". Neither is satisfied to be seen as the best rider in Rwanda, or even in Africa. "I want to be champion everywhere," said Nandwi, "not just in Rwanda but outside. Why not?" They both grinned.