One of the world’s poorest nations, Burundi has a predominantly agricultural economy. The nation’s around gross domestic product (GDP) was $0.7 billion in 1999. Export earnings are controlled by a single crop: coffee. National budget figures for 1998 showed a large deficit, with $148 million in revenues and $219 million in expenditures. The government and foreign companies dominate the export area of the economy. Burundi is heavily dependent on foreign aid, principally from Western Europe. Past austerity measures have added to ethnic tensions. In turn, ethnic and political instability has severely affected Burundi’s production capacity. Burundi’s labor force numbers 3.6 million people, of which 15 % are engaged in agriculture, 22 % in industry, and 59 % in services.

Burundi is a landlocked, resource-poor nation with an underdeveloped manufacturing sector. The economy is predominantly agricultural with roughly 90% of the population dependent on subsistence agriculture. Its economic health depends on the coffee crop, which accounts for 80% of foreign exchange earnings. The ability to pay for imports therefore rests largely on the vagaries of the climate and the international coffee market. Since October 1993 the nation has suffered from massive ethnic-based violence which has resulted in the death of perhaps 250,000 persons and the displacement of about 800,000 others. Only one in four children go to school, and one in nine adults has HIV/AIDS. Foods, medicines, and electricity remain in short supply.

By the late 1990s more than three-fifths of the nation's population was living in poverty, a result of civil strife and the ravages of war, the predominance of orthodox subsistence agriculture, the persistence of low income levels, chronic deficits in the balance of trade, and heavy dependence on foreign aid. Western nations and surrounding African countries imposed economic sanctions against Burundi following a Tutsi-led military coup in July 1996, which affected all of Burundi's exports and its oil imports. Some of the sanctions were eased in April 1997, and a regional embargo was lifted in April 1999, but the process of economic recovery has been slow.