Rwanda–Burundi Border: Still Closed as East African Travellers Reroute Through Nairobi and Addis Ababa

More than two years after Burundi sealed its frontier with Rwanda, the crossing remains shut, and the closure continues to reshape how people, goods, and diplomacy move through the Great Lakes region. As of April 2026, both governments still describe the border as closed, and travellers who once drove or bused directly between Kigali and Bujumbura now have to fly around the two countries entirely, typically routing through Nairobi or Addis Ababa.

How the closure began

The rupture dates to 11 January 2024, when Burundi’s government announced it was suspending diplomatic relations with Rwanda, shutting every border crossing, and beginning to deport Rwandan nationals. Burundi’s internal affairs minister, Martin Niteretse, said the country was suspending diplomatic ties with Rwanda, closing their border and deporting Rwandan citizens, claiming it was a response to its neighbour’s alleged support for a rebel group attacking Burundi. Niteretse was blunt about the reasoning, accusing Rwandan President Paul Kagame of harbouring “criminals who are destabilising Burundi” and declaring relations suspended “until he comes to his senses”.

The immediate trigger was a deadly attack near Burundi’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. In late December 2023, Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye accused Rwanda of hosting and training the Red Tabara rebel group, which claimed responsibility for an attack near Burundi’s western border with the DRC; Rwanda rejected the allegations. Burundi said the December attack killed 20 people, while Red Tabara claimed on social media that it had killed nine soldiers and a police officer. The group is not new to the conflict: Red Tabara has been fighting Burundi’s government from bases in eastern DRC since 2015.

Rwanda’s response was to distance itself from the rebel group and to protest the manner of the closure. A Rwandan government spokesperson, Yolande Makolo, said Kigali learned of the border shutdown through media reports, and that the decision violated the principles of regional cooperation and integration within the East African Community. Months later, Rwanda went further in rejecting responsibility for violence inside Burundi itself. In a statement issued on 14 May 2024, after Burundi accused Rwanda of being behind grenade explosions in the capital, Bujumbura, Rwanda said something was “clearly wrong” with a government that would level such an accusation, insisting it had no connection to and no reason to be involved in the attacks.

This was not the first time the border had been closed over security suspicions. Burundi had also shut the border in 2015, during political violence that followed the disputed re-election of then-president Pierre Nkurunziza, accusing Rwanda of supporting protesters and sheltering the perpetrators of a failed coup; that closure lasted until the border reopened in 2022. The 2022 reopening came after roughly seven years shut, and its collapse in 2024 shocked people on both sides of the frontier who had only recently resumed cross-border trade and travel.

A human cost along the Ruhwa

For the communities that live along the Ruhwa River, which marks part of the Rwanda–Burundi boundary, the closure has been more than a diplomatic abstraction. Generose Nshimirimana, a resident of Rugombo in Burundi’s Cibitoke Province, had regularly crossed into Rwanda to sell tomatoes at a local market before the border shut. She described the closure as devastating to her livelihood, asking where she was supposed to sell her harvest and how she would now pay for her children’s schooling, and urged both governments to resolve their differences and reopen the crossing.

The abruptness of the closure also stranded ordinary travellers on the day it happened. On 11 January 2024, Rwandans who had appointments in Burundi and Burundians who had travelled to Kigali for healthcare found themselves stuck when the land border was sealed, though special permits were issued that afternoon to allow them to return home. Traders faced similar disruption at official crossing points. A Burundian bus company manager reported that police were turning back vehicles arriving from Rwanda at the Gasenyi-Nemba crossing, while a trader who distributed food between the two countries described Rwandans being blocked at the Ruhwa crossing while trying to get home, alongside Burundians who had gone to shop at a Rwandan market. That trader, Révérien Burikukiye, said simply that ordinary people’s only wish was to live in harmony with their neighbours, and that political leaders should resolve their disagreements without making residents suffer for it.

Still closed, with no resolution in sight

Over two years on, there is little sign of the impasse breaking. As of the latest reporting, the Burundi-Rwanda border remains closed at Burundi’s insistence, with no clear indication of when, or whether, it might reopen. Political dynamics inside Burundi may be reinforcing the status quo rather than easing it: Burundi’s president is positioned to extend his rule with a new term from 2027, having been endorsed by his party to stand for what would be a second seven-year term, leaving little domestic pressure to reverse a policy framed around national security.

Diplomatic friction between the two countries has continued well past the initial rupture, playing out increasingly on the international stage. Rwanda’s government has noted that sanctions issued by the United States targeting only one party to the regional peace process misrepresent the underlying reality, and separately confirmed that it submitted a Notice of Arbitration to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in late November 2025, an indication that the dispute has moved from a bilateral standoff into more formal international legal and diplomatic channels.

Official travel guidance from Western governments reflects the same static picture. British travel advice notes that Burundi closed its border to Rwanda in January 2024 and warns of tension near the frontier, with each side accusing the other of cross-border raids on local inhabitants. Australian travel advisories likewise confirm that Rwanda’s borders with both Burundi and the DRC remain closed, and note that the closure, in place continuously since 2024, forces travellers to fly rather than cross overland.

Flying around, not through

With the direct land route unavailable, travel between Rwanda and Burundi now depends on regional air links and third-country stopovers. Bujumbura’s airport retains direct flights to Kigali on RwandAir, alongside direct connections to Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines and to Nairobi on Kenya Airways, meaning a journey that used to take a matter of hours overland now typically involves flying out to one of these regional hubs and back in, rather than crossing the shared frontier on the ground. Ethiopian Airlines’ hub in Addis Ababa and Kenya Airways’ hub in Nairobi both function as key regional air bridges into Bujumbura, alongside RwandAir’s daily service from Kigali, underscoring how central these two cities have become as substitutes for what was once a short land crossing.

For business travellers, aid workers, students, and families with relatives on either side of the border, this has meant longer, costlier journeys and greater dependence on regional carriers. It has also pushed some overland trade further afield: with the direct route closed, both countries increasingly route goods through alternative corridors such as Tanzania, even though doing so brings its own complications, including separate visa requirements for road hauliers.

Nearly three years after the frontier first slammed shut over accusations of rebel support and cross-border attacks, the Rwanda–Burundi border remains one of East Africa’s more entrenched closures, a reminder that in the Great Lakes region, security disputes between neighbours can outlast the news cycle by years, leaving ordinary travellers to circle the closed door by air.