Between M23 and Its Own Citizens: Can Burundi Survive the Squeeze?
Fighting this rebel group is one thing, but fighting your people while trying to survive this tough neighborhood is another.
Hello Reader,
Bujumbura, the capital city of the East African country, Burundi, is under serious pressure. The country’s politics is at a boiling point, but perhaps the greatest of these pressures is from the M23 Rebels, minutes away from the centre of the city.
Bujumbura is 45 minutes away from Uvira, the capital of the South Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a stronghold of the M23 rebels. The M23 rebels have left this area severely devastated. Burundi has openly supported the DRC government in that conflict; together, the two countries accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels in destabilizing the region to facilitate illegal mining.
The haunting and widespread fear of this war looms in Bujumbura. Soldiers in various states of weariness roam the streets on every corner, suspicious of everyone who lingers a little too long.
I left Bujumbura with no photographs of any landmarks in the centre of town. Every time I raised my camera to take a photograph, a baby–faced soldier with a rifle draped across one shoulder unexpectedly emerged, demanding that I move on.
That was the fate of a reporter from The Continent Newspaper.
Since 2020, the Politics and Economy of Burundi have been on a steady decline.
The leaders inherited a complex set of problems from their predecessors. In the run-up to his unconstitutional third term in 2015, Former president Pierre Nkurunziza arrested many dissidents, killed many innocent civilians, and passed draconian laws to force himself on the people. A popular law he passed was the ban on jogging in the streets of Bujumbura. The administration argued that jogging allows dissenters to gather and plot against the government. Five years later, COVID-19 hit the country, and President Pierre died. The COVID pandemic hit the country hard. It restricted trade with other countries, which led to a spike in food prices. The country, like many other African countries, heeded the advice of the International Monetary Fund and devalued its currency, which led to a loss of about 47% the currency’s value.
These and many other mounting issues are increasingly making the citizens more dissatisfied with the current administration, which has also been drifting towards authoritarianism. For example, in 2025, citizens came out to protest the exclusion of the country’s opposition from parliamentary elections, and the government responded with tear gas and bullets. Burundi is a tiny country, landlocked in one of the world’s toughest geopolitical regions. It is caught between Rwanda, the DRC, and the M23 Chaos.
The M23 is a serious threat at its door.
Fighting this rebel group is one thing, but fighting your people while trying to survive this tough neighborhood is another.
President Évariste Ndayishimiye might be buying trouble.
