Burundi: landlocked by poverty

Thursday 5th June, 2008

It should be producing enormous food for consumption and export given its advantage as a landlocked country in Africa. But, Burundi, like its neighbours, is embroiled in internal conflicts that have incapacitated its food production efforts, leading to starvation and hunger in the process.

The nemesis of the assassination of the country's first elected president in 1993 has refused to go away and allow for real planning and development of Burundi. The unending plot by the Hutus and the Tutsis to control the seat of government and the vital organs of state establishments has prolonged the instability for over a decade. Today, Burundi has over 48,000 refugees in Tanzania and other nations while no fewer than 140,000 are known to have been displaced internally as a result of the decade of war, which killed at least 200, 000.

The country, made up of a famished population of 8.6 million, is now confronted with poverty, hunger and threat of diseases. That in itself is worsening the subsistence agricultural sector, which employs 93 percent of the country's labour force, slashing its Gross Domestic Product, GDP to $6.3 million in 2007.

Most of the population [68percent] live below poverty line while life expectancy for men stands at 50.86 while that of women stays at 52.6.

According the CIA World Factbook, food, medicine and electricity are in short supply in the country.

However, Burundi is also a beneficiary of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's $21.8 million for the improvement of farm crops and it is also getting some World Food Programme food aid for its natives, mostly returnees from Tanzania and Rwanda.

Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, has begun the rehabilitation of the livestock sector, which also suffered as a result of many years of wars. Under the Programme, 8000 Burundian farmers have received 24,000 goats for rearing under the supervision of some 50 local experts trained in animal husbandry by the FAO. The fund for the project is jointly provided by the United Kingdom, Sweden and Spain.

The United Nations website, Reliefweb, says The United States Agency for International Development, USAID, has also made available the sum of $640,000 to the International Institute of Agriculture to provide farmers in Burundi with high-yielding and disease-resistant cassava seedlings to increase their production.

The main problem facing Burundi now is that its economy seems to stagnate at $1 billion GDP while continued insecurity, subsistent farming and overpopulation may aggravate its food crisis and make it to continue to depend on food aid from the WFP. The only way out is for the country to embark on mechanised food production.