Burundi's energy consumption
Burundi, a landlocked nation in East Africa, faces significant challenges in energy consumption and access. Despite having potential hydroelectric and petroleum resources, the country struggles with inadequate infrastructure and ongoing civil unrest, which hinder the development of its energy sector. As of 2022, Burundi produced only 0.36 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity annually while consuming approximately 4 TWh, resulting in a severe energy deficit. The majority of electricity generation relies on hydroelectric plants, though reliance on diesel fuel has increased, with oil use rising from 0 to 33% over several years.
Approximately 10% of the population has access to electricity, primarily in urban areas, while the electrical grid remains limited. Moreover, Burundi imports a small amount of electricity from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, underscoring its energy vulnerability. Efforts to rehabilitate and expand the energy infrastructure have been initiated, aiming to enhance electricity access to 40% of the population by 2030. Overall, the country's low energy consumption correlates with its economic struggles, where agriculture dominates and most of the population lives below the poverty line.
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Burundi's energy consumption
Official Name: Republic of Burundi.
Summary: As a poor, landlocked nation, Burundi is dependent on international aid to supplement its rural, agricultural economy. The nation’s potential to exploit its petroleum and hydropower resources has been hampered by its lack of infrastructure and civil unrest.
Burundi is a landlocked country in east-central Africa sharing borders with Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Lake Tanganyika. Its area is 17,292 square miles (27,830 square kilometers), and as of 2024, the population was estimated to be 13.5 million, giving Burundi the second-highest population density in sub-Saharan Africa. It has an equatorial climate, with two wet and two dry seasons and annual rainfall averaging about 59 inches (150 centimeters). 64 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2014, and the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 was $900. The economy of Burundi is based primarily on agriculture, which supports more than 90 percent of the workforce. The country is heavily dependent on international aid. There is little industry other than processing of agricultural exports, and the country’s mineral wealth has not been exploited. These conditions are due in large part to political instability (including a civil war between 1993 and 2003), lack of infrastructure, and high transportation costs.
Burundi’s people also suffer from inadequate energy resources. Burundi produces 0.36 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity annually, according to 2022 estimates—among the lowest totals in the world (particularly low taking into account the size of the country’s population), and consumes 4 TWh annually (2021). Electricity is primarily generated from hydroelectric power plants and thermal power plants fueled by diesel. The electrical grid covers only limited parts of the country, primarily cities, and about 10 percent of the population of Burundi has access to electricity. Burundi exports no electricity and imports about 40 gigawatt hours from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most of the grid consists of 30 kilovolt transmission lines, the primary exception being two 110-kilovolt transmission lines running from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the capital city of Bujumbura, which also serve several cities in the northwest of the country, including Bugombo, Cibitake, Muzinba, and Bubanza.
Burundi has petroleum deposits in Lake Tanganyika and the plains of Rusizi, but these have not been developed, and the country produces no petroleum or natural gas, while consuming 6,000 barrels of petroleum per day (2022). Because of its limited energy use, Burundi ranks quite low worldwide in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, with total emissions of 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. Burundi also has significant potential for hydroelectric development, but this has been hampered by civil unrest, with some energy infrastructure development abandoned and some projects destroyed. In 2007, a project sponsored by the African Development Bank was launched to rehabilitate existing hydroelectric power stations, construct two transformer plants in Bujumbura, rehabilitate and expand existing networks, establish new connections, and install new meters. However, since 2009, the percentage of electricity from hydropower has steadily fallen--from 100 percent to about 61 percent in 2022--while oil use has increased from 0 percent to 33 percent during that period.
Burundi lags behind neighboring countries in terms of infrastructure development and scores poorly on many measures of well-being, such as life expectancy (68.1 years in 2024) and infant mortality (35.7 deaths per 1,000 live births).
In 2010, the African Development Bank issued An Infrastructure Action Plan for Burundi, which outlines a number of measures to alleviate poverty by developing the power, transportation, and communications infrastructure of the country; lowering the cost of services to make them more accessible; and increasing the potential for domestic business development. One goal of this program is to provide reliable access to electricity, raising it to 40 percent of the Burundian population by 2030. Another is to increase trade by bringing down transportation costs, which account for nearly half of export prices, by paving all existing roads (about 1,242 miles or 2,000 kilometers).
A third major improvement undertaken is in telecommunications. East Africa is the last densely populated region of the world to gain access to the existing international network of submarine data and voice communications cables. By 2022, 7.47 million mobile phones were in use, an average of 0.58 per person.
Bibliography
African Development Bank. An Infrastructure Action Plan for Burundi: Accelerating Regional Integration. September 2009. www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/An%20Infrastructure%20Action%20Plan%20for%20Burundi%20-%20Main%20Report%20v1.2.pdf.
"Burundi." Sustainable Energy for All, www.se4all-africa.org/seforall-in-africa/country-data/burundi/. Accessed 30 July 2024.
"Burundi Energy." CIA World Factbook, 24 July 2024, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/burundi/#energy. Accessed 30 July 2024.
Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. "Burundi: Energy Country Profile." Our World in Data, 2024, ourworldindata.org/energy/country/burundi. Accessed 30 July 2024.
US Energy Information Administration. “Country Analysis Brief: Burundi.” www.eia.gov/international/overview/country/BDI. Accessed 30 July 2024.