• Former Burundi street child helps heal civil war divisions
• Burundi's economy to grow by 5.4 pct in 2015 - finance ministry
• Training Burundi's youth to choose peace

• Armed vigilantes in Burundi's capital expose deepening crisis
• Violence, hunger, poverty stalk troubled Burundi, many flee homes
• Schools for Burundi but little education

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Former Burundi street child helps heal civil war divisions
20 March 2017 - In northern Burundi a group of 90 young people are harvesting their first crops --beans, maize, and potatoes -- but this is no ordinary smallholding. The farmers come from both sides of the country's ethnically charged civil war; some were orphaned by the conflict, while others are the children of those who were the killers. Forty percent of the farmers at the project in Gasorwe in Muyinga province are Hutu, 40 percent Tutsi, and 20 percent Batwa pygmies, Burundi's most marginalised people. (more)

Burundi's economy to grow by 5.4 pct in 2015 - finance ministry
22 December 2014 - Burundi's economy is expected to expand by 5.4 per cent in 2015 compared with 4.8 per cent in 2014 thanks to major infrastructure projects, the central African state's finance ministry said on 22 December. (more)

Training Burundi's youth to choose peace
31 July 2014 - Dieudonne Nahimana was a teenager when he saw first-hand the devastating effects of ethnic conflict in Burundi. Today, he draws on his experience of the 12-year civil war between Hutus and Tutsis to nurture a new generation of leaders who can rebuild the east African country and prevent it returning to war. His nation-building project New Generation, in Bujumbura, coaches ex-child soldiers and victims of war to become ambassadors for peace in a nation where ethnic tensions have simmered since the end of the conflict in 2005. (more)

UN Secretary-General hails commitment of Burundian political actors to dialogue
13 March 2013 - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has commended Burundian political actors' commitment to dialogue as all political parties met in the country's capital, Bujumbura, for the first time since 2010 to discuss issues related to the electoral process. The Secretary-General stressed the importance of the elections for Burundi, 'which is determined to address its peacebuilding and development challenges, but also inclusive dialogue' during the pre-electoral period. (more)

Burundi receives $2 billion aid pledge, UN says
30 October 2012 - Donors have pledged more than $2 billion for Burundi's 2012-2015 development strategy to help the central African nation rebuild after civil war, the United Nations said on Tuesday. With relative peace since rebels joined the government in 2009 after almost two decades of civil war, the country is now working to quit the list of least developed countries and to start self-financing its national budget by 2025. (more)

Burundi celebrates Independence Day - South Africa to attend celebration
2 July 2012 - Burundi gained its independence from Belgium on 1 July 1962. South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation has described relations between South Africa and Burundi as 'excellent'. International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane will represent South Africa's President Jacob Zuma at the 50th anniversary of Burundi's independence. (more)

Burundi sees 2012 GDP growth at 4.8 per cent
2 February 2012 - Burundi's economic growth will accelerate to 4.8 per cent in 2012 and 6 per cent by 2014 as the central African country diversifies its agricultural production and boosts investment in tourism and power production, its government said. Burundi is enjoying relative peace since emerging from a decade-long civil war. (more)

Burundi's 2011 foreign direct investment up 4 per cent
27 December 2011 - Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Burundi grew 4 per cent to $104 million in 2011, due to improved reforms on investment procedures, the country's investment board said on Tuesday. 'Previously, nine procedures were required in order to start a business, but with the new investment law, only two procedures are needed,' Liberat Mfumukeko, general manager of the Burundi Investment Agency (API), said. (more)

Burundi consolidating peace despite challenges - UN envoy
7 December 2011 - Burundi is making steady progress in consolidating peace after years of conflict, the United Nations top official in the country told the Security Council on 7 December. Karin Landgren, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Office in Burundi (BNUB) said that for a country still recovering from years of conflict, Burundi is to be commended for the relative political freedoms it has entrenched in its post-transition constitution. (more)

Burundi gets 27.5 million euro grant for water, power
6 December 2011 - Burundi has received a 27.5 million euro grant from Germany to help improve energy and clean water supplies, a German minister said on Tuesday. 'The aid will help to improve living conditions of the population because they will have access to clean water. It will also boost the country's growth because energy is the motor of the economy,' Dirk Niebel, Germany's minister of economic development and cooperation, told a news conference. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Armed vigilantes in Burundi's capital expose deepening crisis
23 November 2015 - As darkness falls, vigilantes armed with automatic rifles emerge to patrol the streets of Bujumbura, a city plagued by killings and violence as Burundi's crisis deepens. A Reuters photographer followed one unit last week. It is the first time a foreign journalist has been allowed to follow such a group, securing images from Bujumbura that will stoke international worries about a new conflict erupting in a nation where an ethnically charged civil war ended just a decade ago after 300,000 people were killed. The region remains haunted by the 1994 genocide in next-door Rwanda, in which 800,000 people, mostly members of the Tutsi minority and moderates among majority Hutus, were massacred. Burundi has the same ethnic mix. (more)

Violence, hunger, poverty stalk troubled Burundi, many flee homes
19 November 2015 - Political violence, a shrinking economy, and biting aid cuts are worsening poverty and hunger across Burundi, amid reports that thousands of people are internally displaced and unable to get help. People are fleeing their homes in one of the world's poorest and hungriest countries, amid United Nations warnings that mass atrocities could erupt following inflammatory remarks by government officials. There have been violent clashes between protesters and security forces in the capital, Bujumbura, and a series of targeted killings. Corpses are regularly found in the streets after nightly gunfire. Children are bearing the brunt of Burundi's political turmoil, agencies said. (more)

Schools for Burundi but little education
10 November 2013 - Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza has built more schools in his eight years in power than all of his predecessors put together, but education levels are still at an all-time low. When Nkurunziza came to power in 2005, he immediately declared primary education free, a widely welcomed policy which resulted in the number of children registered for primary school tripling in a year. But the quality of that education has suffered. According to Unicef, a third of children retook a year of school in 2012, while 38 per cent dropped out. One of the reasons for the drop-out rate is that schooling is not actually free, as parents have to make a 'voluntary' financial contribution to the cost of building the school. In addition, they have to buy uniforms and school materials, while more children in school means there are fewer pairs of hands to help with subsistence farming and chores. In what is one of the world's poorest countries, and where most families count six or seven children, those fees can easily prove too much. (more)

Burundi most corrupt in East Africa again: survey
21 October 2011 - Burundi is East Africa's most corrupt country for the second year in a row, with the region's police, revenue authorities, and the judiciary rated as the worst offenders, a Transparency International (TI) survey showed on Friday. Rwanda was ranked least corrupt in the five-member East African Community trade bloc, said the TI survey, released on Thursday. Burundi had a bribery prevalence rate of 37.9 per cent, from 36.7 per cent in 2010, while Uganda had a rate of 33.9 per cent from 33 per cent last year. Tanzania's bribery rate rose to 31.6 per cent from 28.6 per cent previously. Most East African residents say they expect bribes -- known as 'kitu kidogo', or 'something small' in Kiswahili -- to be demanded from them to use most services and rarely report such incidents. (more)

Burundi death toll rises in three-day battle
19 April 2008 - Burundi's army battled rebels for a third day running on Saturday, in clashes that have killed 20 fighters and six soldiers, a military spokesman said. In some of the worst fighting in months, military helicopters were deployed to the outskirts of the capital Bujumbura on Friday against the rebel Forces for National Liberation (FNL), spokesman Colonel Adolphe Manirakiza said. (more)

Burundi threatens offensive against FNL rebels
26 November 2007 - Burundi said on Monday it was prepared to launch an offensive against the central African nation's last active guerrilla group which is holding two policemen hostage and killed two more soldiers at the weekend. Last week, the Forces for National Liberation (FNL) seized the head of intelligence services in the northwestern province of Cibitoke and a Bujumbura-based police investigator, saying they wanted to exchange the pair for imprisoned fighters. More than a decade of civil war has taken 300,000 lives in the nation of 8 million people. (more)

Burundi: Talks with rebel group postponed
21 April 2006 - Talks between the Burundian government and the country's only active rebel movement that had been scheduled to take place in Tanzania on Monday have been called off. (more)

Burundi rebels reject peace talks offer
13 September 2005 - The last remaining rebel group in Burundi rejected a peace offer from the new government, dealing a serious blow to the Burundi peace process. Rebels of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL) refused to recognize the newly formed government and vowed to continue fighting. (more)

Burundi's Hutu President fires Tutsi Vice President
10 November 2004 - Burundi's Hutu President Domitien Ndayizeye ousted his Tutsi Vice President on Wednesday, accusing him of undermining efforts to end the country's 11-year civil war in a move that threatened to imperil an already fragile power-sharing agreement. (more)

180 Congo refugees massacred in Burundi
14 August 2004 - A Burundian Hutu rebel faction raided a UN refugee camp in western Burundi killing at least at least 180 people, most of them women and children, causing a major setback in efforts to ensure security. (more)