Burundi

Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa, bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Much of the southwestern border is adjacent to Lake Tanganyika.

The Twa, Tutsi and Hutu peoples have lived in Burundi for at least five hundred years and, for over two hundred years, Burundi was ruled as a kingdom. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Germany and Belgium occupied the region and Burundi and Rwanda became a European colony known as Ruanda-Urundi. Social differences between the Tutsi and Hutu have since contributed to political unrest in the region, leading to civil war in the middle of the twentieth century. The country claimed independence on July 1, 1962.

Burundi is one of the five poorest countries in the world. It has one of the lowest per capita GDPs of any nation in the world and a low gross domestic product largely due to warfare, corruption, poor access to education and the effects of HIV/AIDS^. Burundi is densely populated and experiences substantial emigration.