This publication is part of the working documents developed by Nathan Associates on behalf of the Regional Development Services Office for Southern and Eastern Africa (USAID/REDSO) under contract no. GEG-I-00-04-00002-00, section 2, Section 2, Program for Monitoring Economic Reform and Financial Transparency in Burundi 2005—2006.

Due to the lack of arable land, the rural population is experiencing very significant unemployment and underemployment. This population is then available for various manipulations leading to conflicts. Burundian conflicts have always been presented as purely ethnic conflicts, but their root causes lie in the scarcity and poor distribution of resources, which result in the search for the monopolization of these rare resources, such as public resources and income from cash crops by a handful of elites and land by peasants in rural areas.
There is a close relationship between the various determinants of the characteristics of rural areas: land, agriculture and livestock, the environment, employment and conflicts. Earth is at the center because it influences all these determinants.