Burundi

Burundi grew from a kingdom that had emerged by the sixteenth century, ruled by a mwami (king) and structured around cattle, clientship, and the broad social categories of Hutu, Tutsi, and the smaller Twa. Unusually in the region, the kingdom survived the colonial period largely intact, first under German and then, after the First World War, Belgian administration, governed together with neighbouring Rwanda as Ruanda-Urundi.

Independence came in 1962 as a monarchy, which was overthrown in 1966. The decades that followed were scarred by episodes of mass political violence between Hutu and Tutsi, including large-scale killings in 1972 and 1993. The assassination of the first democratically elected president in 1993 triggered a civil war that lasted until 2005 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.

A power-sharing settlement and elections brought a fragile peace, but in 2015 President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek a disputed third term set off a new crisis, with protests, a failed coup, a harsh crackdown, and a wave of refugees. Nkurunziza died in 2020; his successor, Évariste Ndayishimiye, has eased some tensions while keeping firm political control. In 2019 parliament made the central city of Gitega the political capital. Relations with Rwanda have since soured — Burundi closed its land borders with its northern neighbour in January 2024 — and the war in eastern DR Congo, in which Burundian troops have been involved, has escalated close to the frontier and sent thousands of refugees into Burundi.

Burundi is one of the few African countries built around a single language, Kirundi, spoken across the whole population, which gives it a strong shared identity despite its history of division. Most people are Christian, Catholic or Protestant, with traditional beliefs alongside and a small Muslim minority.

The country's most famous cultural expression is the ritual dance of the royal drum, in which about a dozen tall wooden drums are ranged in a semicircle around a central drum while some of the drummers dance to the rhythm. The drums were sacred objects, beaten at coronations and royal funerals; UNESCO added the tradition to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2014, and a presidential decree of 2017 restricted performance to men.

Cattle carry deep symbolic weight — in greetings, blessings, and proverbs — and social life runs on the extended family, the hill community, and respect for elders. Primus, the lager brewed in the country, and banana beer feature at gatherings, along with long, formal exchanges of good wishes.

Burundi is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa and one of the poorest in the world. The great majority of people live on scattered hillside farms rather than in villages, growing bananas, beans, cassava, sweet potato, and — for cash — coffee and tea, which are the main exports.

Bujumbura, on the northeast shore of Lake Tanganyika, is the largest city and economic centre; Gitega, in the cooler central highlands, is now the political capital. Electricity and fuel shortages are common, and years of crisis, aid cuts, and currency problems have kept the economy under severe strain.

Life is rural, hard, and closely tied to the land and the rains. Football and church are the main organised social activities.

Burundian food is simple and starch-heavy. The staples are cooking bananas and plantains, beans, cassava, sweet potato, maize, and ugali, a stiff maize or cassava porridge, eaten with a sauce of beans or greens and, when affordable, a little meat or fish.

Mukeke and ndagala, fish from Lake Tanganyika — the latter tiny and often dried — are the prized proteins near the lake and in Bujumbura. Brochettes and grilled goat accompany a drink in town.

Coffee is the great export but is drunk less at home than sold; banana beer (urwagwa) and impeke, a beer drunk together from a large container at gatherings to symbolise unity, are the traditional social drinks.

Burundi's appeal is scenery rather than built sights, and tourism is minimal. Lake Tanganyika — the world's second-deepest lake, and the deepest in Africa — has beaches along the shore south of Bujumbura and at the lakeside town of Rumonge, with clear water and crocodiles in places, and the country's busiest port trading across the water with Tanzania and the DR Congo.

Inland, the country is a landscape of steep green hills, tea estates, and eucalyptus, cool and quiet. In the south, near Rutovu, a pyramid raised in 1938 marks the southernmost source of the White Nile and draws the occasional visitor, while the southeast has the Karera waterfalls, south of Rutana, and the Nyakazu fault, a rift escarpment.

The Rusizi National Park, at the delta where the Rusizi river meets the lake near Bujumbura, protects hippos, sitatunga antelope, and birdlife, and Kibira National Park in the northwest is montane rainforest continuous with Rwanda's Nyungwe, home to chimpanzees and monkeys.