Why did Burundi Change Its Capital City?

Last Updated on April 16, 2024 by Adam Watts

What’s the capital city of Burundi? Weirdly, the answer to that requires a whole blog post, so here goes.

Burundi, a country I’m pretty sure you can’t place on a map, has a new capital city: Gitega. I’ll repeat that to help it sink in, and help you learn something today. The new capital of Burundi is Gitega.

By capital city, I mean the political capital. The economic capital and largest city in the country is Bujumbura. But confusingly, the government of Burundi, despite Gitega being the new political capital, still sits in Bujumbura.

Why did Burundi change its capital?

Politics. In late December 2018, Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would follow on a 2007 promise to return Gitega its former political capital status (Wikipedia).

Gitega is in a more central location in the country, compared to Bujumbura in the west, making it more suitable as a place for everyone to get together and have a good old chinwag. (This central location idea is also the reason why Brasilia is the capital of Brazil and Madrid the capital of Spain, among others.)

The change of capital city from Bujumbura to Gitega was announced on 24 December, 2018 by President Pierre Nkurunziza and then approved by the Burundian parliament on 16th January, 2019. President Nkurunziza said the change was because Gitega is in a better geographic location. However, according to Wikipedia, its only airport is now defunct, which is odd.

Some additional history that you really don’t need to know includes the fact that Bujumbura was formerly Usumbura, and Gitega itself was formerly Kitega.

To end this short post, here’s a surprise pop quiz to check you were paying attention and your eyes didn’t just glaze over at the sight of all these words. What’s the current economic capital of Burundi?

A. Bujumbura

B. Burundi City

C. Gitega

D. London

The correct answer is A, Bujumbura. The current political capital is Gitega.