Burundi Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
March 8, 2012
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country's media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and began studying Africa in 2006.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download Complete Burundi Chapter (PDF): 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2006/7 (français)
MSI Burundi-2010 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 1.97
In June 2010, Burundians re-elected President Pierre Nkurunziza, who first took office in 2005, in a landslide. It was an overwhelming victory for the ruling party, the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie et Forces de Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD). But the win came only after six other opposition candidates withdrew to protest irregularities in May municipal elections. The withdrawals, and a wave of grenade attacks in June, revived fears of a return to the violence that rocked the country between 1993 and 2006 and killed at least 300,000.
In a press conference in July in Bujumbura, Vestine Nahimana, chair of the media regulation agency Conseil National de la Communication (CNC), made statements illustrative of the bad relations between the government and the press. She strikingly accused journalists of “inflaming the country by their reporting and siding with the opposition by helping them to dispute the elections.” She accused the media of offering too little airtime to Nkurunziza during the campaign. She also pointed to a low election turnout rate ranging from 30 to 50 percent—numbers that conflict with the official rate of 80 percent, announced by the electoral committee.
A few days after Nahimana’s statement, the publication director of the online newspaper Net Press was jailed for several months. The government charged him with treason for an article questioning Burundi’s defense and the ability of security forces to deal with a potential attack by Al Shabaab Somali Islamists, the group responsible for grenade attacks in the capital of neighboring Uganda.
Still, objective observers tend to agree that Burundi’s media, and particularly community radio stations, played a significant part in bringing back peace to the country. Cyprien Ntamagara, chair of the Organisation des Médias d’Afrique Centrale (OMAC), said the media allowed “the people to speak and distance themselves from the official platform, RTNB [Radio Télévision Nationale Burundi].” In Ntamagara’s opinion, it was the responsible attitude of the associated radio stations that democratized Burundi’s institutions. He noted that in the 2005 elections, radio stations banded together in a show of solidarity, deploying more than 120 journalists to cover the elections in every district and contributing to election transparency. Commission Electorale Nationale Indépendante (CENI) itself conceded that without the media, it could not have stamped out electoral fraud and other irregularities for that election. Judging by the results of the May municipal elections, however, it is clear that work remains to ensure the fairness of future elections. Nevertheless, the MSI panelists recognized the importance of the media in reinforcing democratic values, peace, and reconciliation—so much so that some urged the media to expand traditional roles.
