Burundi

Burundi’s western edge drops steeply to Lake Tanganyika, second in depth only to Baikal, whose waters hold hundreds of fish species found nowhere else. Above the shore the Congo–Nile ridge rises to the cool Kibira forest, and east of it a rolling plateau of terraced farms falls away towards Tanzania. At Rutovu a stone pyramid marks a spring that Burundians count as the southernmost source of the Nile. The highlands stay mild all year.

A kingdom took shape on the plateau from the seventeenth century under mwami kings and ganwa princes, and the sacred drum, karyenda, embodied the throne. Germany absorbed it around 1900, and Belgium ran it with Rwanda as Ruanda-Urundi from 1916. Prince Louis Rwagasore, the independence leader, was assassinated in October 1961, months before independence in July 1962. The monarchy fell in 1966, and violence between Hutu and Tutsi culminated in a civil war from 1993, wound down by a peace process begun at Arusha in 2000.

Royal drumming is Burundi’s signature art: drummers carry great drums on their heads, set them round the central karyenda and take turns to dance and play, a ritual UNESCO inscribed in 2014. Beans, cassava and bananas fill the plate, Lake Tanganyika supplies ndagala, tiny sardines dried on the beaches, and sorghum beer is shared from one pot through long straws. Vénuste Niyongabo won Olympic gold over five thousand metres in 1996. Arabica coffee is the chief export, with tea, gold and palm oil.