ORATURE, REPETITIONS AND TRANSCODE ALTERNATION IN FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN LITERATURE: the example of La Gousse vide byFidèle Kaby.
The wealth and perlocutionary strength of African writing lie in the aesthetic strategies implemented by novelists, particularly orature, code and/or transcode alternation, or even repetitions. These characteristics, which among other things define Fidèle Kaby's style, deserve special attention from literary critics. This article illustrates some aspects of this African genre in La Gousse vide, a novel from the last decade, published in line with the denunciation of awkwardness and the establishment of new perspectives on African practice. Initially, it focus on oral procedures and code switching before dwelling on the metabolites. There writing techniques from the quest for identity or the clean way to Kaby to free the French speaking African novel.
Copyright (c) 2025 Humanities and Social Sciences Series
INTEGRATION OF MENTAL HEALTH CARE INTO PRIMARY HEALTH CARE IN BURUNDI
Mental health care remains lagging behind primary health care in low-income countries such as Burundi. The Ministry of Public Health and AIDS Control has included the mainstreaming of mental health care into primary health care in its policy. One of the partners supporting the implementation of this policy is Louvain Cooperation. As part of its Izere Mental Health Project from 2017 to 2021, this organization has launched a pilot project to integrate mental health care into primary health care in two health districts, Buye and Kiremba, in Ngozi. The overall aim of the study is to analyze the effectiveness of intervention approaches used to incorporate mental health care into primary health care. The study provided an overview of the current state of mainstreaming regarding existing practices and research. Using the qualitative method, with tools such as semi-structured interviews and focus group enabled data collection, and the subsequent analysis of this data led to the study’s results. The population of the pilot area gained a good understanding of mental illness thanks to community awareness-raising. The provision of medication and goats to people suffering from mental illnesses gave them access to care. The challenges and issues experienced have led to an openness concerning proposals for interventions to improve mainstreaming.
Copyright (c) 2026 Humanities and Social Sciences Series
Polygamy through the lens of family and couple psychology: Adaptation strategies, emotional regulation, and preservation of self-esteem among Muslim co-wives
Context: In Burundi, Muslim polygamy exists within a normative duality: while legally prohibited, it continues to be practiced and religiously justified in the name of Sharia. Objective: This article analyzes, through the lens of conjugal and family psychology, the adaptation strategies, emotional regulation processes, and self-esteem preservation mechanisms deployed by Muslim co-wives in Burundi. Methodology: A qualitative investigation, based on in-depth semi-structured interviews, was conducted with eight Muslim co-wives residing in Bujumbura, particularly in the neighborhoods of Buyenzi and Kamenge. Data were processed using thematic analysis. Results: The study reveals complex psychological work. To maintain a privileged dyadic bond, the participants cultivate exclusive intimacy and measured conflict management. Inter-co-wife dynamics oscillate between selective solidarity and rivalry, regulated by patience, distancing, or recourse to the sacred. Emotional regulation involves cognitive reframing and the active suppression of negative effects. Finally, self-esteem is negotiated in a dialectical tension between pride derived from identification with the religious system and a narcissistic wound linked to feelings of injustice. Conclusion: This empirical research highlights the agency and sophisticated psychological skills developed by co-wives to adapt to polygamy, thereby moving beyond an analytical framework focused solely on victimization. The results underscore the necessity of considering these adaptation strategies in any psychosocial support.
PSYCHIC DEFENSES AND ADJUSTMENT PROCESSES IN TYPE 2 DIABETES: A CASE STUDY FOLLOWED AT THE DIABETES CONTROL CENTER IN BURUNDI
Background: Diabetes is a condition that profoundly affects an individual’s overall well-being. Although it is primarily a physical illness that threatens bodily integrity, the way patients perceive and interpret the disease, greatly influences their experience and coping mecanism. Some individuals develop resources that enable them to live with the illness, while others may find their coping strategies challenged, putting their health at further risk. Objective: It is from this perspective that the present study aims to explore the psychic defense implemented by patients to promote successful adaptation. Methodology: This study is qualitative and conducted through an inductive approach. It’s based on data collected in patients living with type 2 diabetes, through semi-structured interviews conducted by an interview guide covering themes related to the adjustment process to diabetes. Results: The results reveal that the strategies used may be internal or external and vary from one patient to another. Some are geared toward directly solving the problem namely, diabetes management, while others rely on building support networks, and still others involve religious practices such as prayer. Among the strategies identified, the use of certain defense mechanisms was noted, particularly acceptance and minimizing the seriousness of the illness. Conclusion: Patients facing diabetes employ various adaptive strategies. These findings highlight the need for an individualized and holistic approach to the management of this chronic Keywords: Diabetes, psychic defenses, adjustment process, chronic illness, mental health
Immediate self-corrections in spoken Kirundi: Frequency and repair mechanisms
Context. Kirundi is a tonal language. But unlike French, for example, where diacritical marks are indicated in the text, tones are produced but not written. Problematic. This situation makes reading a Kirundi text challenging, as the reader must rely on meaning and overall sentence context to know which tone to produce. This article addresses therefore of the phenomena specific to spoken language: immediate self-corrections. These phenomena – also conceived as Formulation work marks – disrupt the syntactic regularity of utterances and prevent the formation of discourse constituents traditionally known from written language. Objective. Since these phenomena are considered as to be part of the general cognitive mechanisms of language, the aim of this article is not only to study their attestation in Kirundi oral productions, but also to verify hypothesis that have been widely confirmed in other languages whose typology differs from that of Kirundi. Methodology. The analysis concerns a corpus of approximately 29 minutes of read speech and 34 minutes of spontaneous speech collected from 6 Kirundi speakers (4 men and 2 women). Results. Contrary to the observations made in French, the results show that immediate self corrections are rather frequent in read speech. Conclusion. This work therefore reveals that, despite their universal nature, the realisation of speech repair markers can vary from one language to another awork marks can vary from one language to another and from one speech style to another.
SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENON OF MORTALITY AMONG CHILDREN UNDER FIVE YEARS OLD IN BURUNDI
This article is intended as a socio-anthropological reflection on a social fact: "infant and child mortality which remains very high in Burundi". We hypothesize that the mortality of children under five remains high as a result of: (1) a situation of analytical non-control of variables having a direct or indirect impact on the health of children under five; (2) a lack of participation of the active populations for the control and the mastery of these factors; and, (3) a lack of "transfer of scientific results to political action" (Wunsch 2015:10). Henry Gendreau's model of analysis served as a benchmark to verify these hypotheses
Linking contemplation to rising from the tomb surprises many. Why contemplate? How does contemplation looks like leaving the tomb? This article, which examines the foundation of contemplation, seeks to understand what is experienced by the man who questions art works. It is based on two assumptions: that contemplation revitalizes art works and, that contemplating leads to responsibility, for life and against death. The results of this research show that the artist communicates with the existential moment of his society and that he is the promoter of life as his works help those who follow him to come out of the sleep and the death. This contemplator values him and encourages him to make more effort in this fight against death.
THE RISE OF TRADITIONAL DANCE CLUBS AND THE GENESIS OF DANCECOMMODIFICATION IN BUJUMBURA CITY
This paper investigates traditional dance commodification amidst an ever-increasing ‘club proliferation’ in the City of Bujumbura. Bujumbura, Burundi’s former political capital, is characterised by a colourful ceremonial atmosphere, where private and public ceremonies are organised most frequently. In this context, songs and dances of various kinds are performed to enliven the ambience. The main objective of this study is to get insights into this club phenomenon to determine the origin of the traditional dance clubs and why they are gaining momentum in the city of Bujumbura. Participants in the study were members of six of the several traditional dance clubs performing in Bujumbura city. A qualitative research design was adopted, and an ethnographic method used to investigate the phenomenon. Eleven participants were recruited from six different traditional dance clubs, participant observation was conducted, semi-structured interviews were recorded, conversations were held and pictures taken. Findings show that, based on backgrounds of the founding members, different reasons motivated the creation of these dance clubs at various periods before evolving into entrepreneurial entities. This phenomenon timidly began to occur in the early 90s and lead to a remarkable proliferation of these clubs around the 2000s in Bujumbura city.
STRATEGIES FOR THE RAPID PROMOTION OF CHINESE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN BURUNDI
This paper sets out the current situation of the teaching-learning of the Chinese language in Burundi from the 2011 to 2020. It aims to evidence and explain the factors of the promotion of the teaching of the Chinese language in Burundi, and to identify those who can inspire others countries. This research is based on reflections, documentary analysis and observations in Burundian’s teaching of chinese language environmental. After analyzing the factors of the promotion of the teaching of the Chinese language in Burundi, the results of the research propose factors constituting the strategies of the rapid promotion of the teaching of the Chinese language in Burundi. It is the better sino-burundian cooperation, the diversity of activities related to the Chinese language, the strong will of High schools’ headmasters to create teaching centers of the Chinese language, the extension and the transformation of class-credit into class-club. Finally, this paper releases points which can inspire other countries to rapid promote the teaching of Chinese language.
MORPHOSYNTACTIC MARKING OF TOPIC IN KIRUNDI (JD62)
This article, using a linguistic analysis guided by the corpus, aims to systematically describe the different types of topics in use in Kirundi and the morphosyntaxic means that come into play for their marking. It also consists of identifying the parts of speech that can be elevated to the status of the topic in this Bantu language. The results of this analysis show that Kirundi syntactically employs two types of topics: the external topic (TE) obtained after the dislocation to the left of a syntactic constituent in the sentence and the internal topic (TI) naturally corresponding to the grammatical subject of the sentence. verb. The study also shows that only the arguments of the verb, in general, and the complement of the noun, can play the role of topic in the sentence of Kirundi.
THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CRISIS AND THE TEACHING OF FRENCH IN BURUNDI
Burundi has, for a long time, experienced political and economic crises that sometimes persist over time. These hard times had consequences for the social life of the country and especially in the field of education in general and French in particular. But, with the crisis (not to say recurrent crises) that Burundi has been experiencing, the teaching of French has encountered various difficulties relating to the teachers’quality, the return of refugees from English-speaking countries, to large classes, etc. This brings down the French level of many Burundians. This article, which starts from the observation of the roles that languages play in Burundi and which draws on a reflection based on a documentary research, has no other objectives than to show the consequences of a crisis on the sociolinguistic landscape of a given community.
THE STATE AND CONSTITUTIONALISM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CARL SCHMITT’S CONCEPT OF THE STATE’S UNITY AND ITS POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS TO CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS OF SOCIETY BUILDING.
Carl Schmitt conceptualizes the State as a political unity of the people. This conceptual interpretation of the state is fundamental in his legal theory, particularly his ideas on constitutionalism. This paper provides a critical analysis of Schmitt’s conceptual understanding and interpretation of the state as political unity of people, and discusses potential implications Schmitt’s notion of the State as political unity would have to contemporary legal and political theorizing. In my analysis, I contextualize Schmitt’s conceptualization of the state and his proposed foundational state value of political unity and argue that Schmitt’s conceptualization and interpretation of the state as political unity involves some internal weaknesses and tensions to constitute a relevant normative guide for conceptualizing political strategies which would solve some among contemporary political issues related to society building and legal ordering.
THE PROBLEM OF PROTECTING CHILDREN AGAINST SEXUAL ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION ON THE INTERNET UNDER BURUNDIAN POSITIVE LAW: THE CASE OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.
Child pornography is one form of sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The objective of our reflection is to verify whether all forms of cyber child pornography are punished in Burundi. Indeed, the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography recommends that States criminalize the production, distribution, disseminate, import, export, offer, sell or hold for the purposes of sexual exploitation, pornographic material featuring children. However, the Burundian penal code only punishes those who have used, recruited or offered a child for the purposes of prostitution, production of pornographic material or performances (Burundian penal code, article 542). Even more, no reference to cybercrime is made by the legislator. Finally, the observation is that all forms of cyberpédopornograhie are not punished in Burundi, hence the need to incriminate them for the best interests of the child.
THE PROBLEM OF REPAIRING ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE RELATED TO MINING ACTIVITIES IN BURUNDI
Mining activities necessarily cause damage to the environment. These include the simple deformation of the landscape, various pollutions of water, air and soil, soil erosion, accidents and ecological disasters. These environmental damages cause damage to individuals who therefore need repair. Due to the complexity of this damage, a more efficient system of compensation for victims is essential. Hence the need for the establishment of a compensation fund an insurance system covering the risks associated with mining activities.
OIL PALM AND LAND CONFLICTS IN THE IMBOSUD PLAIN OF BURUNDI: THE CASE OF THE RUMONGE AND NYANZA-LAC COMMUNES
Oil palm cultivation was introduced in Burundi around the middle of the 19th century. The Imbo-sud was the first region to be suitable for hosting this oilseed plant, particularly in the current Rumonge and Nyanza-Lac communes. The oil palm sector has experienced two cropping systems. Initially, we had a traditional polyculture system dominated by a variety of palm called "Dura" which was mixed with food crops. This first variety was subsequently replaced by a new variety "Tenera" considered to be the most profitable. The variety "Tenera" completely changed the former system. This system caused the other crops to disappear. In the 1980s, the policy of consolidation and redistributing land (most of which belonging to the refugees of 1972), which aimed to modernize the oil palm sector, did not produce the expected results. Rather, land conflicts emerged and the region still bears the consequences.
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPMENT IN BURUNDI: THE CHALLENGES OF STREET TRADING
Burundi Government, through its Constitution, proclaims the rights of all citizens to labour. Public discourse, on its turn, advocates for active participation of the population in national development. There are however, disparities between the political narrative and actions on the ground led by the local administration when it comes to managing the population’s initiatives for auto development. This paper takes a critical look at the challenges affecting itinerant trade in Bujumbura and which impact its contribution to national development.
ARTISTIC EXPRESSION IN THE NORTHERN PERIPHERAL NEIGHBORHOODS OF THE GIHOSHA AREA
Talking about art on the outlying districts is somewhat atypical. How do places known to be in crisis call for artistic expression? How can art tame strangeness? This article examines the forms of artistic expression in the northern outskirts of the Gihosha District in Bujumbura City. It seeks to found human action in these regions based on data collected from observation and documentation. The study is based on three hypotheses: the first poses the existence of human activities in these outlying districts; the second postulates that artistic works result from the creative activity of man; the third states that the purpose of works of art is to found life. The results of this study show, first of all, that activities in these places aim to meet human needs. Then some activities require more effort and go beyond the concern of meeting physical and mental needs. Finally, artistic activities produce beautiful works embodying the ideas of order, concord, harmony, etc. They militate for peace in man and in society.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANEMIA IN WOMEN OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE IN BURUNDI: A REGION OF RESIDENCE APPROACH
The anemia among women of reproductive age in Burundi has passed from simple to double within the period 2010 and 2017 with visible disparities between regions. This study aims to analyze the influence of climate change on the prevalence of anemia through the region of residence. With the multi-level analysis, the logistic regression shows that the region of residence is significantly associated with the anemia risk at the 1% threshold. In the NorthWest, North-East and East regions, which have experienced remarkable climatic fluctuations since 1990, women are the most likely to be anemic there than elsewhere. Thus, the influence of the climate change on the anemia is more concern and requires the community resilience.
WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT: A BOOST FOR THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF HOUSEHOLDS IN BURUNDI
The empowerment of woman is playing an increasingly important role in the process of sustainable development. However, social gender relations in various societies keep women in general and Burundians in particular in activities within the household, so that the latter’s involvement and commitment in income-generating activities is ensured find limited. This article aims to analyze the various initiatives taken by women with a view to their empowerment. It starts from the assumption that the empowerment of woman can contribute to socio-economic development in Burundi. Reviewing the abundant literature on woman empowerment, this article focuses on empirical data collected by semi-structured interviews with some fifty women. The data collected show that the empowerment of women brings additional income to households allowing them to improve their living conditions even if some gender stereotypes and social representations are not always favorable to the financial autonomy of women.
WOMEN IN ISLAM: SELF-PORTRAIT AND THE VIEW WITHOUT
This article is a rejoinder to Uko’s perception of the Muslim woman as presented in her Inaugural Lecture entitled The Feminine Ontology and the African Reality: Changing Dynamics in an Evolving Society. Through textual analysis, the article draws facts from the Holy Quran, the Hadiths of Prophet Muhammad, and essays by Muslim men and women to refute Uko’s onesided view of the Muslim woman, and to also present her position as islamically baseless. The article also argues that there is a difference between the manmade laws, as we obtain in our secular systems today, and God’s laws as laid down in His Books (The Bible and the Quran). Individual misconduct cannot be blamed on God or His Prophets, like in El Saadawi’s God dies by the Nile, which Uko quotes often in her work. Men and women have equal rights and duties in Islam, as shown in the Quran, the Hadiths of Prophet Muhammad, and attested by educated Muslim men and women. Ignorance of one’s rights necessarily leads to victimization.
THE ROLE OF THE CONFUCIUS INSTITUTE IN AFRICA: TO PROMOTE THE DEVELOPMENT OF SINO-AFRICAN RELATIONS.
With the deepening of cooperation between China and African countries in the fields of politics, education, trade, etc., the impact of the activities of the African Confucius Institutes and Classrooms on the development of sino-african relation is becoming more and more important. African Confucius Institutes and Classrooms are among the transformers and promoters of sinoafrican relations because their activities are important elements in the process of developing relations between China and Africa.
INTERCULTURAL APPROACHES IN THE TEACHING OF FRENCH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
This article wants to clarify the terms of the word culture and its derivatives and then show through theoretical argumentation and examples that there are definitional problems in relation to the term intercultural. The issue centers on the effectiveness of interculturality as a relevant concept and task in the teaching of French as a foreign language. A series of questions like what is culture? What are its borders? arises in our article. To answer these questions, we resorted to documentary research. This method allowed us to collect some textbooks used in cycle 4 fundamental to teach FLE in Burundi and textbooks from France. The other documents have served us to define the key words of our work. We have found that language and culture are intimately linked to the extent that language conveys the elements of culture. In fact, by learning the other's language, you also learn their culture. If French goes to America, it learns the language in use and adopts American culture. It is the same for an American who goes to Europe, he learns the language that is used. From there, he adopted European culture. However, individual culture plays an important role in a person's cultural identity. This culture is a global identity which is a constellation of several particular identifications which has several distinct cultural instances.
AN INVESTIGATION INTO TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT POST-METHOD PEDAGOGY IN BURUNDI EFL CONTEXT: CASE OF TERTIARY ENGLISH
Post-method pedagogy is a trend in second language (L2) education which has emerged in the early 1990s from a long-felt dissatisfaction with the confining language teaching methods that had characterized L2 teaching history from the late19th century to the late 20th century. From its inception, Kumaravadivelu’s (1994) post-method pedagogy(PMP hereafter) has been receiving conflicting reactions in the English as a Second or Foreign Language(ESL/EFL) world. It is for that reason that this research attempted to investigate the beliefs that Burundi tertiary EFL teachers hold about PMP. In this quantitative study, 15 university English teachers from Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) answered an online questionnaire. The findings of the study revealed that the participants hold moderate positive beliefs about PMP together with its parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility. When the teachers’ beliefs about PMP were compared to see if they differ according to their teaching experience levels, groups of teachers whose experience ranged from 0 to 10 years had a higher level of agreement with principles underlying PMP than their more experienced colleagues though the difference was not statistically significant in any analysis. The results of the present study can be beneficial to both Burundi English language teacher educators and their English students enrolled in English language teaching (ELT) departments. Burundi EFL teacher educators can rely on the findings of this research by becoming informed on the current trends in L2/FL teaching practice and re-visioning their classroom teaching acts accordingly. Their pre-service language teachers can also benefit from these findings by being exposed to ELT methodology courses which give room to aspects of reflective teaching and post-method pedagogy.
FRENCH IN CRISIS IN THE SCIENTIFIC DEPARTMENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BURUNDI
This article deals with the configuration of French in the Scientific Departments of the University of Burundi. It aims to show the place of French, which is both a language taught and a teaching-learning tool in Burundi. This research is based on a reflection and on a documentary analysis which essentially takes into account the models of the scientific departments of the said university. The results of the research highlight that French is taught and learned with 2 credits in the scientific departments of the Institute of Applied Pedagogy (Mathematics, Bio-chemistry and Physics and Technology). In other scientific departments of the Faculties of Science, Engineering Sciences and Natural Sciences such as the Faculty of Agronomy and Bioengineering, no places are reserved for French courses. Rather, the scientific departments give priority to English and Chinese. This study reveals an almost total abandonment of the French course which, however, is indispensable for students who are called upon to write their reports after the third year of the baccalaureate, and this in French. This implies that students need to learn this language in order to acquire oral and written skills useful in the production of the said work which crowns their undergraduate training.
THE FAMILY AS AN INSTITUTION FOR CULTIVATING VIRTUES AMONG THE YOUTH
There is a dichotomy between the cognitive dimension of education and morality in the learning process that leads to the gap between learning and living/acting. But virtue ethics escapes such a dichotomy because it presents practical wisdom as a guide both to our moral acting and reasoning about the good. It is unfortunate that most education institutions many a time have paid little attention to holistic education that cultivates virtues that enable learners to have proper moral understanding. These institutions pay only lip service to the moral upbringing of people since their main focus is on profit maximization. This makes education to be market driven. The encyclical Amoris Laetitia notes that parents rely on schools to ensure the basic instruction of their children but not their moral formation. There is therefore the need for an active role for the family in cultivating intellectual and moral virtues in order to deal with the challenges of today’s global society.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTs) AND THE ENHANCEMENT OF AFRICAN HUMANISM
This paper discusses the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in enhancing African Humanism. By African Humanism we mean people-centeredness, promotion of human values and the reconstruction of Ubuntu ethos which creates a moral community among Africans that shares a common vision for a better future. This paper presents an analysis of how ICTs have facilitated African humanism manifested through relationships of identity and relationships of solidarity via social network platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook groups. Another point advanced in this paper is how ICTs have facilitated the growth of a revolutionary spirit against dictatorship through civic engagement on social network platforms directed towards political issues. The paper finally contends that despite these positive attributes of ICTs, they have also facilitated cultural crisis and identity crisis in Africa.
THE PROBLEM OF EDITORIAL LINES AND THE MOTIVATIONS FOR THE CREATION OF BURUNDIAN RADIO STATIONS
This research work is an empirical study carried out among burundian radio stations in execution (E) or awaiting execution (A) or observation, with a view to identifying the editorial lines and the reasons for the creation of the latter's radio stations to underline the stimuli of the dynamism of the burundian radio world. This study allowed us to see that there is a close relationship between editorial lines and the creation of a radio station. Also, we were able to discover that the conception of an editorial line is carried out under the influence of national conflicts. However, we wonder if there are other factors that may favor the creation of new radios. Therefore, we invite future researchers to think about it.
CROSS-LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE ON LEARNER STRATEGIES OF THIRD LANGUAGE VOCABULARY ACQUISITION: CASE OF BURUNDIAN SPEAKERS OF PERSIAN
The present study aimed to inquire how Burundian students in Iran use multilingual competence in their strategies of acquiring the vocabulary of Persian as an L3. Were investigated the frequency of cross-linguistic learner strategies, the distribution of lexical transfer types across strategy types, and the influence of prior linguistic knowledge on learner strategies. A background information questionnaire, a modified version of the Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), and a questionnaire were used to collect data from fourteen subjects. Findings from the quantitative and qualitative data analyses suggested that, while all strategies were used, the cross-linguistic strategies that were most frequently used by participants were metacognitive, memory, and social strategies. Findings also showed that form transfer was most used by the participants in social strategies, meaning transfer in metacognitive strategies while affective strategies most made use of form and meaning transfer. The findings finally revealed that all languages previously known to participants were influential with English (penultimate acquired language) exerting the greatest role while Kirundi, the participants’ native language appeared to be the least influential.
WOMEN AT BUJUMBURA CITY HALL AND SMALL STREET VENDORS: BETWEEN PRECARITY AND RESILIENCE
This article talks about the identity and the career of the women carrying out the itinerant trade in Bujumbura city. It exposes the provenance factors of this dynamic especially the socio-political crises gone through by Burundi; the fire in some markets, particularly the old Bujumbura central market, burned in January 2013, the diminution of the agricultural lands, the unemployment that strikes the country,.. Although it is informal and illegal, this small trade constitutes an income of many families. In comparison with a legal trade, it is more preferred because it is exacting a less capital and it doesn’t require any administrative form. This article also highlights the profile of women with unstable trade in Bujumbura as well as their perceptions of their activity, on their customers and on the administrative authorities and policies.
THE PARLIAMENTARY MANDATE SINCE THE AMENDMENT OF THE BURUNDIAN ELECTORAL CODE IN 2009: WHAT MANDATE, FOR WHAT PEOPLE?
In Burundi, since 2009, the amendment of the electoral code of 2005 introduced the loss of the seat of a parliamentarian following the change or loss of his/her political affiliation. This provision, which is interpreted as the introduction of an imperative mandate "disguised" yet prohibited by the Constitution, has many consequences on the whole of state governance in general and on the functioning of the two assemblies making up the Burundian parliament in particular. The return to constitutional order is essential in particular by reviewing these provisions which deprive the people of their power in favor of the leaders of the political parties represented in parliament. The exercise of democratic freedoms will depend on it.