Burundi 🇧🇮

Burundi is a sovereign country in Eastern Africa, in the wider region of Africa. The long form of the name is Republic of Burundi. The capital is Gitega.

Its territory runs to 27,834 km², which ranks it 147th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Equatorial Guinea and just ahead of Haiti. For scale, it is a fraction smaller than Belgium.

Some 14.0 million people call it home, placing it 77th of 249 by population — between Rwanda above it and Bolivia below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 12th of 20 in size and 12th in population.

Burundi has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: DR Congo and Tanzania have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Burundi's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Burundi's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Burundi's borders, Rwanda is landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇨🇩 DR Congo
• 🇹🇿 Tanzania

The coordinates the dataset gives are 3.5° S, 30.0° E, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 390 km from the equator, in what geographers would call the equatorial belt.

Indonesia sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 3 neighbours: DR Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. The largest of them by area is DR Congo, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 192.1 million people.

This is one of the world's landlocked countries. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, which reliably raises the cost of trade, because port access depends on a transit agreement with a neighbour. One of its neighbours, Rwanda, is landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Burundi ranks 147th of 249 by area and 77th by population. That works out at 0.019% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.17% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Burundi in the size ordering are Equatorial Guinea at 28,051 km² and Haiti at 27,750 km², against Burundi's 27,834 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Burundi averages 505 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 27th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Density comes out at around 505 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from Burundi are called Burundians.

Officially it is multilingual, listing French and Kirundi. Kirundi is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Burundi. French, the first listed, is shared with 45 other entries worldwide.

Inside Africa it places 30th of 59 by population, and it accounts for 2.9% of everyone living in Eastern Africa.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Africa and Burundi sits 12th of 20 by population and 12th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Rwanda just above and Eritrea just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Ethiopia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Africa has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇷🇼 Rwanda
• 🇪🇷 Eritrea
• 🇪🇹 Ethiopia

The Burundian franc (BIF) is used only in Burundi among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. French is listed for 46 entries here, Burundi among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Money there is the Burundian franc (Fr, BIF). It is issued for Burundi alone.

Gitega is the city to remember for this country.

Websites there use the .bi domain. Calls from overseas start with +257. Its ISO codes are bi and BDI, which is what most databases and flag files use.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.