[excerpt from the book ‘The Greek community in Burundi-Rwanda’)
In the early 1930s, the region of eastern Congo was in a process of economic development a fact which also influenced Burundi. The Belgian administration was trying to connect the Katanga rail network, to the towns that were on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in order to obtain a better and faster transport of goods. For that reason, a railway line reached the port of Kalundu aiming to link the Belgian with the British railway line that crossed the south of the Congo, inside the territory of Rhodesia. According to the plan, the line would pass through Uvira which the Belgians had chosen to develop into a main commercial port on Lake Tanganyika. Due to problems that came up, the project was not completed. This fact led the Belgians to choose Usumbura (cur. Bujumbura) in Burundi as the new major hub of the area. Indeed, Usumbura attracted a flow of railway workers who stayed in the city’s two Greek-owned hotels. Soon, Greek traders from Congo expanded their activities.
