'Life impossible' as Burundians battle crippling basic shortages

Gerard walks despondently around his small pharmacy in the centre of Burundi’s main city Bujumbura, surveying the many empty shelves.

“Patients are dying due to a lack of access to certain treatments,” says the pharmacist, in his 60s.

One of the world’s most impoverished nations, Burundi is plagued by crippling shortages of basic necessities -- vital medicines as well as fuel and sugar, electricity and water.

And, Gerard says, prices for the rare medicines he is able to stock have skyrocketed. “Ventolin, which cost 12,000 Burundian francs ($4.2) last year, now costs 49,000 francs ($17),” he says, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, like others interviewed by AFP.

The landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Africa has witnessed several similar shortages since 2015.

That year, then president Pierre Nkurunziza defied the constitution to run for a third term, triggering bloody political turmoil that led to the deaths of at least 1,200 people, while 400,000 more fled the country.

The United States and the European Union responded to the crisis by slapping sanctions on the nation of almost 13 million people, while development aid was cut.

Washington and Brussels have since restored aid, citing some progress on Burundi’s dismal rights record under Nkurunziza’s successor President Evariste Ndayishimiye.

But today “the situation is worse”, says Felix, a doctor in Matana, a village about 70km southwest of Bujumbura. “Before, we had shortages that lasted two or three days, now we have been waiting for two weeks and we still have no delivery date.”

With more basic necessities becoming impossible to find in many parts of the country, the limited supplies are being sold at exorbitant prices on the black market. Long queues stretch outside petrol stations; shop shelves are empty.

“Life has become impossible for the inhabitants of Bujumbura,” complains Andre, a young executive living in a working-class district in the north of the city.

“We have to walk kilometres (miles) every day to go to work because there are no buses due to the fuel shortage,” he says.

“And when we come back in the evening exhausted, we can’t even take a shower because there is also a water shortage, nor watch TV because there is often a lack of electricity.”

Serge, a 30-year-old farmer in the northern province of Ngozi, says he is finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

In just a few months, the price of salt and palm oil have more than doubled, says the father of four.

“The oil to light our homes is far too expensive, even if we manage to find some,” says Serge, noting also that “months can go by without seeing beer in the local bars”.

According to the World Bank, 87 per cent of Burundi’s population live on less than $1.9 a day in a country where agriculture accounts for 40 per cent of gross domestic product and 80 per cent of jobs.

Global credit insurer and risk management company Coface said Burundi had foreign exchange reserves equivalent to just 0.7 months of imports in December 2023, warning that “the shortage of foreign currency remains a major cause for concern”.

To try to remedy the situation, Burundi eased foreign exchange restrictions in December to reduce the gap between official and black-market rates.

But most goods are brought in at the black-market rate -- except oil, medicine and fertiliser imports which are controlled by the state -- so the reforms have proved “only moderately effective”, Coface said in a July report.

Burundi’s economy, said one local economist, is mired in “too many dysfunctions, and too dependent on aid”.

“The sectors which generated foreign currency, whether agriculture or the mining sector, are in distress today.”

The dearth of foreign currency means it is increasingly difficult to import products. In his pharmacy, Gerard says he has “had to fall back on medicines of sometimes dubious origin.

And the nation’s leaders seem to be hard-pressed to tackle the crisis. Questioned by MPs about the shortages earlier this year,

Prime Minister Gervais Ndirakobuca acknowledged that he had “no solution to submit to you here”.

Michel, a Bujumbura civil servant in his 40s, was pessimistic. “Personally, I have lost all hope of seeing the situation improve, despite President Evariste Ndayishimiye’s promises of a bright future.”