iblog

Do you know that the capital of Burundi is Bujumbura? Well, before you store it in the area of your brain reserved for pub quiz items, be aware that it soon won’t be! Yes, the President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, has decided it’s time for a change. The new capital will be the town of Gitega, closer to other towns in Burundi and to Kampala, capital of Uganda.

The move is being made because Bujumbura is relatively isolated on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, while Gitega is well-connected and closer to major trading partners. It’s therefore considered better for business. At least the Burundians are relocating to a real place, and not creating a fake capital . You only have to look at the limited success of Brasilia or Abuja (capital of Nigeria) to see that sticking a pin in the middle of your national map is not the best way of siting a capital.

So what about the UK? Why should London be the capital of England when Manchester or Birmingham are so much more accessible? And why stick with Cardiff as the premier Welsh city, when Owain Glyndwr had his capital at Machynlleth hundreds of years ago - much better placed in the middle of the country, surely? Only the Scots, with accessible and equitable Edinburgh, seem to have got the right idea. Can we rely on Gordon to re-draw the national map when he gets to Number 10, I wonder?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Current Affairs, Travel, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.