Key Trends from the 2003 country brief

• Burundi is one of the smallest Sub-Saharan African countries and has only a few agencies involved in agricultural research.
• ISABU is the main agricultural research agency in Burundi and accounted for more than half the country’s total spending and research staff in 2000.
• After 1993, investments in agricultural research plummeted to very low levels in response to the civil war, and all expatriates and many national researchers holding postgraduate degrees left the country since the onset of the civil war in 1993.
• Since 1997, government funding to ISABU has recovered slightly. Donor funding is apparently reappearing also, but total levels remain far below those before the outbreak of the war.
• Private-sector involvement in agricultural research in Burundi is nonexistent.

Burundi