Selling Toyotas to Congo a way to fight Burundi dollar snag

Dollars are hard to find in tiny, troubled Burundi – but three nearby African nations and plenty of used Land Cruisers and Range Rovers offer some entrepreneurs a solution.

Buying vehicles from cash-strapped owners and selling them in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo is an increasingly popular ploy in the East African country, which is trying to emerge from three years of political upheaval. Along with crossborder sales of beverages, furniture and fittings, it’s a way to beat foreigncurrency shortages spurred by declines in investment and spats with Western donors.

“To continue my business, by hook or by crook I need to get dollars,” says Ali Hassan, who sells two vehicles a week, making $1,000 profit a month and hard currency to buy spare parts from Dubai for his mechanic workshop. “Banks don’t serve us, so I thought selling things like used cars could be a good deal.” Such workarounds signal the difficulties still faced by Burundi, a landlocked nation of about 11mn people where violence sparked by a dispute over presidential terms that began in April 2015 has claimed hundreds of lives and forced thousands to flee, many to its other neighbour, Tanzania.

The economy, already the region’s smallest, contracted 4% in 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund. Though the government is touting a coffee- and mining-led resurgence over the next decade, the IMF says 2018 growth may be just 0.1%.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned in August that worsening unemployment and poverty “increase the likelihood of instability and exacerbate the risk of violence.”

Central bank officials say currency shortages have stopped some foreign companies from repatriating profits. But they insist the situation will improve, with inflows that slowed when the European Union suspended direct aid to the government being replaced with the proceeds from rising coffee and tea output, and payments to Burundian troops serving with a peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

The bank’s governor, Jean Ciza, has said Burundi needs to revive other types of agriculture, livestock-raising and manufacturing that produce exports while creating jobs.

In the meantime, people like Jeannette Nduwumusi, a shopkeeper in the capital, Bujumbura, have quickly become experts on the used-car markets in Burundi’s neighbours. Rwanda, one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, has a taste for saloon cars, while buyers in the rugged, mineral-rich Congo need off-roadfriendly vehicles such as Range Rovers and Toyota’s Land Cruisers. Nduwumusi and her husband trawl Facebook and WhatsApp groups to find vehicles for sale locally, buy in Burundian francs and drive them cross-border to sell where dollars are in greater supply. “We suffer because of political problems, but we are not ready to give up,” she said of her business difficulties. They’re competing with Eric Nzisabira, whose car spare-parts business had ground to a halt by 2016, and who’s also seeking automobile bargains. He says he took inspiration from his father, who sold items to Tanzania in the 1990s to overcome the economic effects of a regional embargo imposed on Burundi for a military coup during its civil war.