Burundi Country Info - Africa

Description and Basic Information

Burundi with its capital Bujumbura is located in Africa (Central Africa, east of Democratic Republic of the Congo). It covers some 27,831 square kilometres (slightly smaller than Maryland) with 8,691,000 citizens. French and Rundi are the the languages commonly used by the people in Burundi. Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda are bordering countries.

Burundi is landlocked, though much of the southwestern border is adjacent to Lake Tanganyika. It is one of the ten poorest countries in the world and it has the lowest per capita GDP of any nation in the world. Burundi has a low GDP rate is because of civil wars, corruption, poor access to education, political instability and the effect of HIV/AIDS. Despite its struggles, it offers a great choice of national parks. The Natural Reserve of Rusizi will most likely be your first visit in Burundi for the simple reason that it is very near to the capital city of Bujumbura. All nationalities require a visa to visit Burundi except citizens of Uganda. A visa costs US$80 on arrival at the airport or can be obtained from embassies prior to travel.

Pictures from Capital (Bujumbura)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Burundi

The landscape features hilly and mountainous, dropping to a plateau in east, some plains. The average density of population is about 312 per km². The climate in Burundi can be described as equatorial with high plateau with considerable altitude variation (772 m to 2,670 m above sea level), average annual temperature varying with altitude from 23 to 17 degrees centigrade but being generally moderate as the average altitude being about 1,700 m, average annual rainfall being about 150 cm, two wet seasons (February to May and September to November), and two dry seasons (June to August and December to January). Potential threats by nature are flooding or landslides or drought.

To reach someone in Burundi dial +257 prior to a number. There are 31,500 installed telephones. And there are 838,400 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".bi". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz. The following list are the 17 regions/states in Burundi we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Burundian population grew at a rate of 3.56% (or by 351,324 citizens). With 97,349 deaths and 408,629 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 3.16%. 40,044 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Burundi: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.