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Publication | 2023

Burundi: Acute Food Insecurity Situation for September 2023 and Projections for October - December 2023 and for January - March 2024

Global Food and Nutrition Security

In the current analysis period of September 2023 – coinciding with the harvest and post-harvest periods or "Impeshi" growing season – 1.52 million people, or 12 percent of the total population (rural) analysed, continued to face high acute food insecurity and were classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). Typically, this period results in improved food availability both in households and in the markets as well as an improvement in household food accessibility, however, this year, this period experienced unprecedented inflation – particularly for foodstuffs.

During the first projection period of October to December 2023, which coincides with the lean season, the situation is expected to deteriorate, with 1.88 million people in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). This includes 164,000 people in an IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) and 1.7 million people in IPC Phase (Crisis). The situation is expected to improve in the second projection period of January to March 2024 covering the next harvest period of the 2024A season, with 1.23 million people in IPC Phase 3 or above, including 105,000 people in Phase 4 and 1.13 million people in Phase 3.

The current analysis classified all eight Livelihood Zones (LEZs) in IPC Phase 2 (Stressed) while three LEZs (Northern Depression, Humid Plateaus and Southern Depression 'East’) are expected to enter Phase 3 during the first projection period. People facing high acute food insecurity are primarily rural households that are highly dependent on markets and who rely on income from rare and low-paying opportunities such as agricultural labour, families strongly affected by climatic hazards (droughts, floods, parasitic attacks, etc.) and families of returnees who have not yet restarted their livelihoods due to of their low purchasing power.

The crisis can be attributed to the limited performance of the second 2023B growing season in certain affected localities of the country, climatic hazards (excessive rainfall, floods and cases of hail), poor access to agricultural inputs, internal displacement of people, persistence of repetitive fuel shortages which disrupt market supplies, inflationary and fiscal pressure, the intensification of the cholera epidemic in the coastal area of Lake Tanganyika.