Guillaume Muhoza
The President of the Republic of Burundi, Evariste Ndayishimiye, has just given an exclusive interview to the newly created radio channel Kazoza FM which has as its mission the promotion of young people’s capacity to start their own business with its slogan: “Be Your Own Boss”.
In this broadcast which lasted around two hours from 2pm this Friday, the debate revolved around the theme: “Burundi, country of opportunities” and one thing to say is, it’s really in an optimist and a sower of hope in the youth that the President of the Republic showed up.
Fetching mostly from his personal experience, the President of the Republic showed that youth can be a powerful engine of change, even going so far as to say: “A new generation must be created, as we old people are burnt out.”
Evariste Ndayishimiye, ex-combatant of the CNDD FDD movement before the latter joined the government in 2004, said he was only receiving 70K BIF per month at that time:“I had my own family to feed and others who lived with me, at a certain time, i sank into despair.” Resourceful, this is how he would initiate many small projects as mushroom farming, breeding chickens, rabbits and pigs. For him, there is no time to despair, especially now: “We are on the right track, we are trying to get things working well again so that everyone can be their own boss and realise their dreams in Burundi.”
On the hot issue of the moment, thousands of Burundians, especially young people, who migrate to Europe through Serbia President Evariste Ndayishimiye says that they are like the prodigal son of the Bible :“They rush to Europe but there they will do the same jobs they would have done here… like washing toilets, yet the capital they use to get to Europe could be used to start a business here and move forward little by little. But many of them simply don’t want to start from scratch…they prefer to curse the country. I learned that if Burundi is badly seen abroad it is because of Burundians who speak badly about their country.”
The native of Gitega, which became the political capital of the country in 2019, invited Burundians to be proud of their country and not to compare themselves to other advanced countries: “Considering the time we spent in conflicts, do you think that the others were sitting, we are going little by little.”‘ He went on to announce that soon a document including the vision of making Burundi an emerging country by 2040 and a developed country by 2060 is being finalised for adoption by the Council of Ministers.
The President, a former military officer, demobilised after the 2015 events, to run for the general secretariat of the ruling party, invited the population not to let injustice take hold in the country: “Let’s stand up together, and discriminate against the administrative authorities who fail to do their job and see that development will not follow.”
The President, to encourage this culture of denunciation, invited the population, once again, not to hesitate to give him the names of irresponsible administrative authorities via his personal whatsapp number: +257 69 214 286.
