Burundi

Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley where the African Great Lakes region and East Africa converge. It is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura. Although the country is landlocked, it has an extensive inland waterways and lake system, including Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest lake in the world after Russia's Lake Baikal. The Twa, Tutsi, and Hutu peoples have lived in Burundi for at least 500 years. For more than 200 of those years, Burundi was an independent kingdom, until the beginning of the twentieth century, when Germany and Belgium occupied the region and established a colony. Burundi achieved independence in 1962. The authoritarian government of President Pierre Nkurunziza was elected in 2005 in a disputed election. In 2015, his government was accused of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity by the United Nations. Burundi is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world, with an estimated GDP per capita of US$475. The majority of the population is rural, with a density of 601 people per square kilometer in 2009. Agriculture is the dominant sector of the economy, accounting for 58.9% of GDP in 2012. The major crops are coffee, tea, cassava, sweet potatoes, maize, sorghum, bananas, manioc (tapioca), and livestock. Industry is a relatively small sector of the economy, accounting for 8.5% of GDP in 2012, and including processing industries such as sawmilling, brewing, and soap manufacture. Mining is also a small sector of the economy, accounting for 2.4% of GDP in 2012, and including deposits of coltan, a mineral used in electronic equipment. The country is a member of the East African Community, the African Union, and the United Nations.