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(EAST AFRICAN - KENYA) Burundi: Portrait of a ‘mandazi’ economy

Burundi: Portrait of a ‘mandazi’ economy
By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO (email the author)
Posted Monday, December 13 2010 at 00:00

What is the best way to learn about a country and its city without talking to anyone? By taking a 5 kilometre jog from your hotel before dawn. I call it the “Joggers’ Dipstick Index.” At that time, the government propaganda machinery and the tourism promotion apparatus is still asleep, so there is no one to spin the story. So, recently, I was up before dawn on a visit to the Burundi capital of Bujumbura, doing my Jogger’s Dipstick Index thing.

Now, in Johannesburg or Nairobi, you might be mugged before you get back to your hotel. No such worries in Bujumbura. Its streets are very safe. But no cities could be more different than Bujumbura and Nairobi in the morning darkness. In Nairobi, there are hundreds of workers walking to their places of labour. Bujumbura is, well, very sleepy in the morning. There aren’t too many people about trooping to work in the morning. That is telling.

The army of workers groping their way in the dark in Nairobi is the cheap labour that makes our capitalist and middle-class lifestyles possible. Many are also newspaper vendors. They are also an important economic indicator. Only in cities and towns that have many private companies and industries do so many people head out to work so early. And, also, you need a widely read free press for the vendors to sell newspapers in the morning.

When the CEOs and COOs of blue chip companies arrive to work at 7.30am or even 7am, as many are wont to do, they need to find the office cleaned, their coffee set out, and newspapers on the table. In a city like Bujumbura, where new businesses only began to sprout a few years ago, and where there is no modern free press, a very large number of people work for the state. Those can afford to arrive at work at 8am, because the boss will be in at 9am.

The morning Joggers’ Dipstick Index also provides some insight into small businesses in a city. In Kampala, for example, a jogger would encounter people walking to the market with baskets of live chicken; lorries stacked with cattle for the slaughterhouses; and very many armed private security firm workers on the road. I was not prepared for some of what I encountered in Bujumbura.

I would run from the hotel to the banks of Lake Tanganyika, which is virtually in the middle of Bujumbura. Every 50 metres, I would meet a muscular young man carrying a huge packet of mandazi in each hand. Over a four-day period, I saw more mandazi being carried around in Bujumbura at dawn, than I had in all of the last 10 years of my life. Bujumbura, I concluded, must be East Africa’s mandazi capital. If there is something like a mandazi economy, then it must be in Burundi.

When I asked a senior government minister why there was so much mandazi being carried around, he looked at me, puzzled at the question. That is the way it had always been, for him. Then he answered simply; “They take it to the market to sell.” That is when I realised that, in the Burundi context, I had asked an extremely dumb question.

The surprises didn’t end there. Standing on the banks of Lake Tanganyika as the morning light is just peeping through the clouds is awesome.

But it felt eerie because, unlike the beach in Maputo, for example, at that time, there was virtually no activity. I noticed a lone boat with some men bathing. Thank goodness it was men bathing. It would have been rather awkward if there had been some women in the mix.

The beach is not built up, with tall grass growing along large parts of it. And closer to central Bujumbura, it is littered with all sorts of garbage. I asked myself what the beach would have looked like if Bujumbura had been Nairobi or Kampala.

Definitely out of this world, with fashionable homes worth millions of dollars, fancy restaurants and clubs. They would be such rich and exclusive neighbourhoods, you would be arrested for jogging near them when most honest people are still asleep. In Bujumbura, though, it remains untouched. If there is anything that tells you that Burundi and its capital are still virgin, this is it.

But it revealed something else. In all measures of corruption, Burundi has been rated the most corrupt nation in the East African Community. Now, a country where prime beach land has not been grabbed by the rich and powerful cannot be that corrupt, surely. Still, foreign businessmen speak of bureaucracy and corruption. Burundi’s terrible corruption ranking comes from something else. It is a tiny economy.

Compared with next-door neighbour Rwanda, which was also wracked by a violent conflict, Burundi is anything up to 10 years behind.

Burundi’s economy is less than the volume of business done at Nairobi’s Nation Centre, where the Nairobi Stock Exchange and other high-end businesses are based, in a week.

Because it is still small, a Kenyan businessman told that that by the time everyone who needs to be bribed in Bujumbura has been paid, a company would have doled out 25 per cent of its revenue.

However, because the economy and companies in Kenya are several times bigger, by the time all bribe-takers in Nairobi have been sorted, a company will have paid less than 0.25 per cent of its revenues.

The bite of the corrupt is therefore felt more painfully in Burundi because they take out a bigger chunk from a small pie, than it is in Kenya.

The best beach spot in Bujumbura is the Lake Tanganyika Hotel. The sand is so clean, and the beauty so majestic, I could feel myself tremble at the knees.

But, again, this was like a dinner party without guests. On the breezy evening when we visited the hotel, the beach was empty.

But the hotel was crawling with tall American soldiers, who are dropped off in the evening in their dozens. At our hotel, there were a bunch of French officers.

They serve as reminders that Burundi, together with Uganda, are the only two countries that sent peacekeeping forces to perilous Somalia—apparently a lot of these “technical experts” are supporting and advising on that peacekeeping effort.

Given the modest circumstances of Burundi, the sacrifice it is making in Somalia is enormous and must be admired.

But Burundi wins out with more than a large heart. It is a noticeably clean city.

Not anything near Kigali, but far cleaner than potholed Kampala, Dar es Salaam, or Nairobi. Its suburbs are almost pristine. And there, on the leafy hillsides, live the Burundi bourgeoisie.

Which raises the question, why is that it is former French colonies in East Africa that sweep their streets and fix their potholes better?

It can’t be the French heritage, because their Central African Francophone neighbours are quite slothful.

I suspect one reason could be the size of the countries. If you have little, you tend to look after it more carefully.

If you have plenty (or even excess) like the Democratic Republic of Congo, you can afford to let some of your resources go to waste.

However, the Rwanda and Burundi mindsets that are inclined to having clean public spaces, have far-reaching political implications.

If you accept Kigali-style cleanliness, then you must accept that there will be a “cleaner,” usually a very strong president.

However, unlike Rwanda — where a global-minded English-speaking elite that had lived in exile for nearly 35 years returned and took power as part of the Rwanda Patriotic Army in 1994; then opened up the country, and changed its old Francophone dynamics — Burundi has had no such shake-up.

The result is that, like other French-speaking nations in Central Africa — the Central African Republic, Gabon and the two Congos — there is a part of it that feels like something Charles de Gaulle left behind.

Cut off from the bigger cluster of French-speaking nations in West and North Africa, Francophone Central African nations come across as if they are choking, sandwiched by the Anglophone nations that are, on the whole, richer and more democratic (though that must, of course, be understood in a very limited sense).

What Burundi needs is to come up for some fresh air, and the East African Community might just do it for Bujumbura.

In the meantime, President Pierre Nkurunziza battles to shepherd it through an African-Francophone-Anglophone-Kiswahili maze. His report card is mixed.

In June, Burundi had an election. The Nkurunziza government refused to accede to opposition demands for electoral reform.

They boycotted the poll, leaving good old Pierre to run and win against himself.

The Bible-toting Nkurunziza’s demeanour, though, is of a man who is unperturbed by the illegitimacy of that poll.

I attended a conference that he opened. He walked in, straight-backed, with the pious air of a youthful bishop at a coronation.

He speaks plainly, and does not ramble like your common African political joker.

He asked us to stand for a few seconds of silence in memory of the gallant Burundi soldiers who have been killed in the great cause of restoring peace to Somalia. We did.

That is when it all sank in. Nkurunziza is not only Burundi’s “cleaner,” he actually manages the place like a stern priest would run his parish.

He is not only Burundi’s president, he is also its pastor-in-chief. And guess what, the good Lord seems to be answering some of his prayers for Burundi.

Labels: BURUNDI, ECONOMY, INFORMAL ECONOMY

posted by MrK @ 4:05 PM