A glimpse into Burundi’s silent decline

Overshadowed by war in its neighbourhood, economic depression, and continuing authoritarianism, Bujumbura feels threadbare.

---

NANJALA NYABOLA IN BUJUMBURA

BUJUMBURA, the smallest of East Africa’s economic capitals, unfurls from Lake Tanganyika’s shores into the nearby hills. Its centre is only a few kilometres from the hippo-populated waters of the freshwater lake. It’s a simple town, where, in some restaurants, ordering mukeke – a fish endemic to Lake Tanganyika – results in an hour-long wait as the kitchen staff first send someone down to the market to pick one up to cook.

Burundi’s politics and economy have been in a quiet slide since the 2020 Covid pandemic which, by some accounts, claimed the life of former president Pierre Nkurunziza. At the time of his death, Nkurunziza was an authoritarian. In the run-up to his unconstitutional third term, which began in 2015, his administration killed and arrested dissidents and passed draconian laws to constrain civic space. One notable Nkurunziza-era law was a ban on jogging in the city. The regime argued that jogging was creating opportunities for dissenters to gather and plot against Nkurunziza’s rule.

On the heels of that political crisis, Burundi, a landlocked country, was also heavily affected by the Covid pandemic, which dramatically cut imports and increased their costs. As in other countries dependent on imports, the strengthening dollar added inflationary pressure.

In May 2023, on the advice of International Monetary Fund, the Burundian government devalued the local franc. It has lost 47% of its value against the dollar since 2016, fuelling black-market currency exchanges. Fuel imports are severely constrained and petrol-station queues are common. Indeed, my nominally four-star hotel was able to run the generator and, therefore, pump water into the rooms for only 30 minutes. Friction with Rwanda led to a border closure that disrupted trade further and discouraged tourism to two national parks near Bujumbura. They are some of the larger tourist attractions in Burundi.

The regime argued that jogging was creating opportunities for dissenters to gather and plot against Nkurunziza’s rule.

But perhaps the most significant pressure on Bujumbura today is the war in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo. Uvira in South Kivu province, which has been battered by the March 23 Movement rebel group, is a mere 42-minute drive from the town centre. Burundi is backing the DRC government in Kinshasa in that conflict: together they accuse Rwanda of orchestrating paramilitary activity to destabilise the region and facilitate illegal mining.

Every time I raised my camera to take a photograph, a baby-faced soldier with a rifle draped across one shoulder unexpectedly emerged, demanding that I move on.

The spectre of that war haunts the streets of Bujumbura. Soldiers in various shades of fatigues lurk on every corner, suspicious of everyone who lingers a little too long. I left Bujumbura with no photographs of any landmarks in the centre of town. Every time I raised my camera to take a photograph, a baby- faced soldier with a rifle draped across one shoulder unexpectedly emerged, demanding that I move on.

The people who govern Burundi undoubtedly inherited a complex set of conditions. But their own repeated defaulting to authoritarianism unnecessarily compounds the situation. The government responded to 2025 protests against the exclusion of the opposition in parliamentary elections with bullets and teargas. Fighting your own people, while trying to survive as a tiny country in one of the world’s toughest geopolitical neighbourhoods, is borrowing trouble.

---