The BBC's world affairs correspondent, Peter Biles, is travelling through Uganda, Burundi, Kenya and Ethiopia to examine the scale of the task the commission has set itself. After visiting Uganda, the second leg of his journey takes him to Burundi.

Years of war have destroyed Burundi's economy

First, the sight of Mount Kilimanjaro, back-lit by a spectacular morning sunrise.

Then as the plane descends towards Nairobi, it crosses the Rift Valley, the Ngong Hills and finally the National Park where wild animals roam almost within sight of the city.

Two hours later we touch down in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura.

It is nine years since I was last here, and I have forgotten that "Buj" is in a beautiful setting, wedged between the mountains to the west and Lake Tanganyika to the east.

Guerrilla attacks

However, the hills around Bujumbura are also a place of killing and fear.

Hutu National Liberation Forces (FNL) rebels mount regular hit-and-run guerrilla attacks against the Tutsi-dominated Burundian army.

The FNL is the only rebel group that has not signed a ceasefire agreement with Burundi's transitional government.

My first port of call is the headquarters of the United Nations operations in Burundi.

The commander of the more than 4,000 UN troops is the impressive Maj Gen Derrick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi, from South Africa.

An African Union peacekeeping force, led by South Africa, was deployed here in June 2003.

A year later, the African troops donned blue berets after the Security Council approved a UN mission in Burundi to support the fragile peace process.

Gen Mgwebi says Burundi was an important test case for the African Union, and that the presence of African peacekeepers helped the UN to set up far quicker than usual.

Remembering the South African military operations in Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and in South Africa's own townships in the 1980s, it is strange to see the South African forces relishing their peacekeeping role.

Despite their best efforts though, the war goes on, fuelled by the smuggling of small arms.

Police patrol

At night, with a full moon rising over Lake Tanganyika, we join a South African patrol on the lake.

Within a few minutes, the vessel is thundering along at 25 knots (46.3km/h), with the lights of Bujumbura fading behind us and flickers of light appearing from the Congolese town of Uvira on the opposite shore.

Officer Mellrick Pasquallier is on the lookout for small fishing boats that may be carrying illegal weapons for the FNL rebels in Burundi, although it is clear the smuggling in this volatile area of the Great Lakes runs in both directions.

Some 4,000 UN peacekeepers operate in Burundi

The next day, the UN is running a convoy to the central town of Gitega.

The roads outside Bujumbura are considered insecure, so there are two huge white armoured personnel carriers at the front and back of the column of five civilian vehicles.

Mozambican UN soldiers are crammed into the armoured cars.

As the convoy snakes its way over the mountains, it is easy to observe a root cause of the age-old conflict in Burundi - the shortage of land in a tiny country, with a population approaching seven million.

The slopes are terraced and cultivated in every direction.

In Gitega, I visit Itankoma camp, where 1,300 Tutsis have been living since 1996.

They fled their homes around Gitega after the massacres of 1993 which followed the assassination of the elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye.

The Tutsis first moved into the centre of the town for safety, and then to this camp, where they have built mud houses with corrugated iron roofs.

MEMBERS OF THE AFRICA COMMISSION Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor Hilary Benn, UK Development Secretary Michel Camdessus, former IMF head Bob Geldof, musician Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister, Ethiopia Trevor Manuel, Finance Minister, South Africa Ralph Goodale, Canadian Finance Minister Nancy Kassenbaum Baker, former US Senator K Y Amoako, UN Economic Commission for Africa Benjamin Mkapa, President of Tanzania L K Mohohlo, Governor Bank of Botswana Dr Anna Tibaijuka, Director, UN Habitat, Tanzania T J Thiam, group director, Aviva, Ivory Coast William Kalema, chairman, Uganda Manufacturers Assn Fola Adeola, chairman, Fate Foundation, Nigeria Ji Peiding, vice-chairman, Chinese parliament's foreign affairs committee Tough task for Commission

There is an air of permanence here, but the camp leader, Goreth Nkurunziza, whose husband was among those killed in 1993, tells me it is a wretched existence.

Certainly, Burundi has some of the worst humanitarian indicators in the world, at least as bad as those in Sudan's Darfur region.

One in six people have been displaced by conflict.

Like northern Uganda however, the war in Burundi is one that rarely makes the news headlines.

When I meet the UN Special Representative, Carolyn McAskie, she raises a fundamental issue.

International donors are reluctant to pump development money into a conflict-ridden country like Burundi, but after years of war, they end up having to fund expensive peacekeeping operations.

Ms McAskie says it is clear what needs to be done.

"It's in the donors' interests to increase the development investment, to prevent conflict, and save themselves the cost of a peacekeeping mission for ever," she says.

It is another powerful message for the Commission for Africa to ponder later this week.