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With an estimated population of 8.5 million inhabitants in 2007 (World Bank), Burundi, in the Great Lakes region, is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa. It is also one of the world’s poorest countries. In 2004 an estimated 67 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line.

The climate is of a temperate tropical type, with two rainy seasons. Eighty per cent of the country’s total area of 28,000 km2 consists of an undulating plateau situated between 1,600 m and 2,000 m above sea level.

Burundi is a landlocked country, and the nearest ports are located more than 1,500 km away in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, or Mombassa, Kenya.

Nine in ten Burundians live in rural areas and depend almost exclusively on subsistence farming and livestock for their livelihood.

Agriculture
Burundi is overwhelmingly rural. Its economy is based on agriculture. But the sector is struggling. In the 1970s and 1980s, agriculture was already in decline, and the situation worsened with the start of the 1993 conflict. Food production is the dominant activity, and coffee and tea are the nation’s biggest earners. They accounted for 8 per cent of agriculture production but for no less than 90 per cent of export earnings before the conflict started. The collapse of the international coffee and tea markets in the 1990s has added a heavy burden to the economy. These external factors were compounded by the destruction by armed rebels of about half of the country’s coffee washing stations, the destruction of one tea factory and serious damage to other factories. Violence also affected other agro-industrial facilities in the cotton, palm oil and sugar subsectors.

Since 2002 more than 300,000 displaced people have returned to their birthplaces and original villages in Burundi. The issues of land ownership, lack of land and other economic alternatives in agricultural activities complicates their reinsertion into the economy.

From an agricultural point of view, soils on the plateau are generally good. In some areas farmers struggle to produce crops because of the low fertility of the soils and the steep nature of the hills on which they plant. Common cropping practices are primarily based on crop associations, most frequently beans, sorghum, cassava, millet and maize. Almost without exception, farms also include livestock, mainly small animals.

The rapidly growing population, which doubles in size every 30 years or so, faces the problem of land that is becoming less available and increasingly unproductive. Generalized overexploitation and erosion do not allow for a fallow period, which is the traditional way of maintaining soil fertility. Farmers have little or no capital to invest in chemical fertilizers.

The economy
The growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) was negative for several years until it picked up again in 2004. In 2002 per capita GDP had fallen to US$110 from US$210 in 1990. After 2005, reforms to stabilize the economy, recover public finance and improve governance led to an economic recovery. The GDP growth rate rose to 5.9 per cent in 2006.

The impact of conflict on the distribution of income and wealth has been significant in both urban and rural areas. The extent and the depth of poverty have become greater. Inflation has wiped out much of the Burundians’ purchasing power.

Fishermen are active on Lake Tanganika, bordering Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but their market outreach is fairly limited.

Source: IFAD