Burundi

The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States is a group of countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific that were created by the... Georgetown Agreement in 1975. The group's main objectives are sustainable development and poverty reduction within its member states, as well as their greater integration into the world's economy. All of the member states, except Cuba, are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement with the European Union. The Cotonou Agreement is the successor to the Lomé Conventions. One of the major differences from the Lomé Convention is that the partnership is extended to new actors such as civil society, private sector, trade unions and local authorities. These will be involved in consultations and planning of national development strategies, provided with access to financial resources and involved in the implementation of programmes. Many small island developing states are ACP states; the fourth Lomé Convention was revised in 1995 in Mauritius and gives special attention to island countries in this agreement.
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The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, is a free trade area with twenty member states stretching from Libya to Zimbabwe. COMESA formed in... December 1994, replacing a Preferential Trade Area which had existed since 1981. Nine of the member states formed a free trade area in 2000 , with Rwanda and Burundi joining the FTA in 2004 and the Comoros and Libya in 2006. COMESA is one of the pillars of the African Economic Community. In 2008, COMESA agreed to an expanded free-trade zone including members of two other African trade blocs, the East African Community and the Southern Africa Development Community .
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The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in... Africa. The Group comprises the African Development Bank , the African Development Fund , and the Nigeria Trust Fund . AfDB provides loans and grants to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries in Africa. It is owned and funded by member governments, and has a public-interest mandate to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Its headquarters is in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Following the end of colonial period in Africa, growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity , and for a regional development bank.
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The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002,... the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity . The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states. The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Among the objectives of the AU's leading institutions are: The African Union is made up of both political and administrative bodies. The highest decision-making organ is the Assembly of the African Union, made up of all the heads of state or government of member states of the AU. The Assembly is chaired by Yayi Boni, president of Benin, elected at the 18ordinary meeting of the Assembly in January 2012. The AU also has a representative body, the Pan African Parliament, which consists of 265 members elected by the national parliaments of the AU member states. Its president is Idriss Ndele Moussa.
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo , commonly referred to as DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa or the DRC, is a country located in Central Africa. It is the... second largest country in Africa by area since the accession of South Sudan as an independent country and the eleventh largest in the world. With a population of over 71 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the nineteenth most populous nation in the world, the fourth most populous nation in Africa, as well as the most populous officially Francophone country. It borders the Central African Republic and South Sudan to the north; Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi in the east; Zambia and Angola to the south; the Republic of the Congo, the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west; and is separated from Tanzania by Lake Tanganyika in the east. The country has access to the ocean through a 40-kilometre stretch of Atlantic coastline at Muanda and the roughly 9 km wide mouth of the Congo River which opens into the Gulf of Guinea.
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Rwanda  /ruːˈɑːndə/ or  /ruːˈændə/, officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in... central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.7 million . Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All of Rwanda is at high elevation, with a geography dominated by mountains in the west, savanna in the east, and numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons every year. The population is young and predominantly rural, with a density among the highest in Africa. Rwandans form three groups: the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. The Twa are a pygmy people who descend from Rwanda's earliest inhabitants, but scholars disagree on the origins of and differences between the Hutu and Tutsi; some believe that they are derived from former social castes, while others view them as being races or tribes. Christianity is the largest religion in the country, and the principal language is Kinyarwanda, which is spoken by most Rwandans. Rwanda has a presidential system of government.
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