Although there are plans to connect Burundi to its neighbors by rail, the country does not have any railway infrastructure.

Wu Guanzheng, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, confirmed in an August 2006 meeting with members of the Rwanda Patriotic Front that China intended to fund a study into the viability of building a railway that would connect Isaka with the existing Tanzanian railway network and run through Kigali in Rwanda to Burundi. Tanzanian railways use a 1,000 mm meter gauge, but TAZARA and other neighboring nations, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), use the 3

In the same year, a second project was started with the goal of connecting Burundi and Rwanda, both of which do not have railways, to Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), thus, to the rest of Southern Africa. The governments of Burundi and Uganda supported the proposed new railway from the western Ugandan railhead at Kasese into the Democratic Republic of the Congo during a meeting to officially establish the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA).

A planned railway project to connect Tanzania and Rwanda has also included Burundi.