Burundi endures ‘worst economic crisis in a country not at war’

Amisia Aleko, who lives in the poorest area of the main city of the world’s poorest country, smiles when recalling the last time she and her four children ate animal protein.

“We ate some fish in 2019. That was a good day,” said 40-year-old Aleko in Buterere, on the outskirts of Bujumbura in the landlocked African nation of Burundi.

“Now, every once in a while, we eat peanuts. This is worse than before,” she said, describing her family’s diet of one meal a day of renga renga, a stew of leafy vegetables. A few steps away, residents search for scraps of food at a rubbish dump.

Civil wars, political assassinations, ethnic violence, coups d’état, insurgencies, corruption and venal rulers have kept tiny Burundi — a former German and Belgian colony — stuck at the bottom of the world’s poverty rankings for two decades.

Now, this impoverished country in the heart of the Great Lakes region — Burundi’s annual GDP per capita is less than $200, according to World Bank data — is trying to attract multilateral lenders and foreign investors to restore the economy and end a decade of being shunned by international finance.

President Évariste Ndayishimiye has said he is opening up one of Africa’s most reclusive and authoritarian states in a bid to break out of the isolation enforced by his late predecessor, the “Eternal Supreme Guide” Pierre Nkurunziza, whose rule prompted US and EU sanctions.

“Those who say that Burundi is the poorest country in the world do not know Burundi today,” Ndayishimiye, sitting on a throne-like chair decorated with golden lions, told the Financial Times in an interview at the presidential palace. “This country comes from the greatest poverty, but it is coming out of it towards a resurgence.”

“We began reforms to facilitate the country’s development, aimed primarily at good governance, the fight against corruption and economic embezzlement,” said Ndayishimiye, whose country is suffering from a severe foreign exchange crunch and resulting petrol shortages. He was speaking before the legislative elections held in June and July this year.

Ndayishimiye was a rebel fighter during the 1993-2005 ethnic-based civil war that pitted Hutus against Tutsis — often considered a prelude to the 1994 Rwandan genocide next door. Today he wants to burnish his free-market credentials even as his country suffers from the “worst economic crisis in a country not at war”, according to a foreign diplomat in Bujumbura.

The president’s opponents, and outside observers, remain sceptical about the sincerity of his efforts to eliminate corruption and implement economic and political reforms.

In a rare admission, even Rémy Nkurunziza, a leader of the Imbonerakure, the radical youth militant wing of Ndayishimiye’s ruling party, acknowledged that the mood ahead of this year’s elections had been sour because of the country’s “economic situation”.

The government still won every seat in both houses of parliament. Human Rights Watch denounced the ruling party for intimidating, harassing and threatening people “to secure a landslide victory”. 

A decade ago, the president’s predecessor announced he would run for a third term in office, triggering an attempted coup and political crackdown, which prompted an International Criminal Court investigation into alleged state-sponsored crimes against humanity.

The US and the EU imposed sanctions while foreign donors froze budgetary support.

When Ndayishimiye took over in 2020 he started a rapprochement with Washington and Brussels, and afterwards the IMF began releasing some financing.

“Sanctions were lifted and that helped open Burundi to the world,” said former foreign minister Albert Shingiro. “Now foreign support is starting to come.”

At the end of last year, officials announced investment and financing commitments of up to $4bn — higher than Burundi’s total GDP of $3.6bn — including $1.4bn from Anzana Electric Group and its partners, such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, UK and US governments, to provide electricity to a country in which only about 10 per cent of the population has access to it.

“Burundi wants to build a modern economy,” said Brian Kelly, chief executive of Anzana, a private energy developer and operator.

In January, Chinese companies won a $2.15bn contract to build a railway linking Burundi’s nickel deposits with Tanzania’s port of Dar es Salaam. Benjamín Evita Oma of Equatorial Guinea’s chamber of commerce hailed Burundi as “Africa’s last investment frontier” while fishing for deals here. 

But other would-be investors and foreign governments remain wary of corruption and human rights abuses.

Investors from Australia, China, the UAE and US are vying for access to Burundi’s minerals, including coltan, used in mobile phones and other electronic devices.

But “they are all afraid of coming here as the government bullies companies if they come and don’t do things ‘their way’,” said a foreign mining company executive, referring to state corruption.

Burundi continues to be close to the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Multilateral lenders say Ndayishimiye has introduced some timid reforms to improve the efficiency of public spending and the business climate.

But Burundi’s official exchange rate remains overvalued, and the local currency is officially worth more than double its traded value on the informal market. The IMF noted that “the current dual exchange rate regime and high foreign exchange premium cause pervasive distortions in the economy”.

“This is an extremely poor country where a good part of its resources go into the pockets of senior officials who have access to hard currency,” said Burundian economist André Nikwigize, who is aligned with the opposition.

Ndayishimiye says his government is “in the process” of unifying the exchange rates. But with inflation expected to remain at around 40 per cent, his vision of an “emerging country in 2040 and developed country in 2060” is far-fetched.

According to the World Bank, poverty remains among the “highest globally”, with nearly 63 per cent of the population living on less than $2.15 per day in 2024.

Fewer than half of Burundi’s children complete primary school, while chronic malnutrition affects over half of those under five.

Ndayishimiye shrugs off the criticism: “I am convinced soon the whole world will consider Burundi a miracle.”

Opposition leader Agathon Rwasa, who lost to Ndayishimiye in the 2020 presidential election, slammed the president’s rosy view: “Burundi is not the paradise he wants to showcase. This country is suffering, the situation is catastrophic. There’s no sugar, no petrol, no drinking water.”