EU takes aim where it hurts Burundi: peacekeeper funding
But while dollars are in short supply and businesses in urban areas are struggling -- the country's economy contracted shrank by an estimated 7.2 per cent last year -- the effect of reduced aid flows has not been enough to sway the government given that much of the population are subsistence farmers. ILLUSTRATION | MICHAEL MUNENE |
The European Union plans to cut back its funding for Burundi's lucrative peacekeeping contingent in Somalia to try to force President Pierre Nkurunziza into talks with opponents and away from the brink of ethnic conflict, diplomatic sources said.
Nkurunziza's government has brushed off other cuts in aid from Western donors seeking a way to pressure the government to stop a year-long political crisis exploding into a new war in Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region.
