In line with the continent-wide political changes, Rwanda and Burundi embarked on democratic transitions in the 1990s. Both states have recently emerged from genocidal violence, protracted warfare and unrepresentative political regimes. Many comparisons have been drawn between the two nations because of their similarities in ethnic composition and the political instability and genocide that have clouded their post-colonial history. Both countries experienced colonialism, German (1897-1916) and Belgian (1916-62), that transformed their pre-colonial socio-political structures. Since gaining independence on the same date, 1 July 1962, both states have been dominated by mono-ethnic single-party regimes that practised discrimination and subscribed to genocidal ideologies. Changes in political leadership took place via coup d’états, whereby one faction of the elite would replace another. As a consequence, both states have had a turbulent political history, attributed largely to the capture of the state by one ethnic group (Hutus in Rwanda and Tutsis in Burundi) whose leaders have systematically prevented the other from accessing state institutions and resources, using discrimination and repression that resulted in violent uprisings and protracted warfare.

Popular interpretation of political violence in Rwanda and Burundi focuses on ethnicity as the primary factor. Indeed, a substantial amount of violence is manifested along ethnic lines. However, any analysis that dwells purely on ethnicity as the root cause of the violence and instability would be seriously flawed. While ethnicity might form a fault line along which the groups separate, a substantial part of the political competition and violence in both countries can be attributed to regional and personal differences between intra-ethnic elites.