Burundi
In Burundi, a small African country, 5-10% of the population is Muslim. Most of the country's population is made up of indigenous black people who have been Christianized, while another 20% believe in local African religions. Although the majority of Muslims are Sunni, there is also a small Shiite community in the country.
Islam first arrived in what is now Burundi, as it did in other parts of Africa's interior, thanks to Muslim merchants traveling along the Tanzania-Mozambique route. Muslims established a small trading colony in the Uvira region in the 1850s, and from 1885 onward they settled in Burundi's interior. The colonial authorities played a key role in the increase of the Muslim population in the region in these years. When the region came under German colonial rule, the occupiers employed a large number of the local workforce, and when the labor force was insufficient, they brought Muslim workers from neighboring countries, either by force or voluntarily. As a matter of fact, the Belgian colonial administration, which took control of the region after the Germans, continued to bring in more workers and merchants.
