In June 2023, Burundi’s copyright office widened the net of businesses that have to pay for playing music. Hotels, bars, bar-restaurants, reception halls, recording studios and hair salons with a television on the wall were all brought in. The reason the Office Burundais du Droit d’Auteur et des Droits Voisins (OBDA) gave, as reported at the time, was that Burundian authors “earn nothing” of the kind their counterparts in other countries earn. The fees were for the authors of the songs.
Twenty-two months later, on 7 May 2025, OBDA’s director Claudette Mukankuranga was asked what had happened to that money. Her answer, quoted directly, was two sentences. “Nous continuons à percevoir ces redevances auprès des utilisateurs,” we are continuing to collect these royalties from users. And: “Dès que l’Office sera prêt, nous en informerons les artistes,” as soon as the Office is ready, we will inform the artists.
That is the finding. Burundi has a statutory collecting society, a tariff schedule with real numbers, a widened collection base, and a director confirming on the record that collection continues. What it does not have, on any document this desk could obtain, is a distribution.
What the law actually requires#
Burundi’s copyright framework is Law No. 1/021 of 30 December 2005 on the protection of copyright and related rights. It is not vague about the two halves of the job. Article 34, paragraph 2, on equitable remuneration for private copying, says the money “shall be collected and distributed by a collective management organization.” Collect and distribute, in the same clause. Paragraph 4 says the shares between authors, performers and producers follow special regulations set by the culture ministry, and Article 64 puts those rights in the hands of a collective management body established for the purpose.
The law also sets the economics: Article 77 requires a single equitable remuneration when a commercially published phonogram is broadcast or communicated to the public, and Article 78 splits it 40 per cent to the producer, 60 per cent to the performers.
The body meant to do all this was created by presidential decree 100/237 of 7 September 2011. In May 2018, then culture and sports minister Pelate Niyonkuru signed a circular intended to bring the 2005 law into effective application from 1 June 2018. The musician Yves Kamikiwe, who records as Kami, called it an important step but said it needed an annex spelling out how royalties would actually be collected.
The tariffs are specific, which is what makes the silence loud#
The fees announced in 2023 are not placeholders. They derive from a joint ministerial ordinance of 21 January 2014, and the reported schedule is granular: bars and restaurants pay 10 per cent of the average price of a drink, multiplied by half the number of chairs, every quarter. Shops pay between 6,000 and 12,000 Burundian francs depending on headcount. Hotel rooms are charged at 5 per cent of the room price. Banks and travel agencies pay 12,500 to 25,000 francs by headcount. Transport vehicles pay 3,000 to 10,000 francs depending on the number of seats. Hair salons pay 3 per cent of the price charged per person per day.
Mukankuranga’s 2023 explanation was that venue owners would sign contracts with the office, and those contracts would determine how the money was recovered. A 2014 workshop had put a figure on the ambition: a billion Burundian francs to be collected for rights holders. That was a target, not a receipt, and no source reviewed here reports what was actually collected in any year, from any category of user. A tariff this precise should generate a number. None has been published.
Not everyone welcomed the 2023 widening. Omar Mazina, who runs a studio in the Bwiza zone, put it bluntly: “Si l’OBDA nous demande de payer beaucoup d’argent, nous allons diffuser des chansons étrangères,” if OBDA asks us to pay a lot, we will play foreign songs instead. A levy on local repertoire that nobody can see flowing back gives a business a reason to stop playing local artists. In Chad, similarly, bar and restaurant fees funded a payout the state broadcaster was meant to fund: small venues are easier to invoice than government entities.
367 artists, and one unfinished sentence about the treasury#
Two separate reports, in April and May 2025, give the same figures: 367 registered artists across music, film and literature, and roughly 2,495 registered works. That is a hard ceiling on who could be paid even if a distribution happened tomorrow. Mukankuranga’s consistent public message has been to urge artists to register, stressing that the heirs of a registered dead author can draw royalties for fifty years.
Then there is the November 2025 interview, given to Burundi’s state newspaper on 7 November and published on 15 November. Asked how the copyright office contributes to the country’s national development vision, Mukankuranga’s answer was that on the contract signed by artists, “il y a une somme qui va dans la caisse publique,” there is a sum that goes into the public purse. She added that any artist signing a contract stands to benefit considerably, and that most do not come in to sign one.
This desk is not going to tell you what that sum is. The published interview does not say whether it is tax on artist income, a state levy on the office’s receipts, OBDA’s own administrative commission, or money collected on artists’ behalf. It gives no amount and no mechanism, and one sentence about each wallet receiving money breaks off mid-clause. What can be reported accurately is the framing: the clearest public account of where Burundian copyright money demonstrably goes describes it going into the public purse, offered as evidence of the office’s value to the state, in the same period in which no distribution to artists has been announced.
The people on the other end of it#
The reporting that produced Mukankuranga’s May 2025 quotes was not about governance. It was about the surviving members of Nakaranga, a Burundian orchestra of the 1970s. Mathias Ntamijuriro, 72, who plays the umuduri, said other musicians perform his songs “comme si elles leur appartenaient,” as though they owned them, “et personne ne réagit,” and nobody does anything about it. Joseph Torobeka, 77, who says the orchestra produced more than three hundred songs, draws a pension of 16,000 Burundian francs a month and says he is the only one of his old colleagues who gets even that.
Aster Anderson Rugamba, who coordinates projects at the Amicale des Musiciens du Burundi, confirmed the general condition: most of Burundi’s older musicians live in difficulty. The singer Bérénice Irumva, in the same reporting, said the office collects regularly but does not yet distribute, for want of suitable software. That attribution matters: the software explanation came from an artist, not from OBDA. Irumva also supplied the line the whole file turns on: “Les droits ne se mendient pas, ils se revendiquent.” Rights are not begged for, they are claimed.
Nearly three years earlier, in June 2022, the artist and copyright researcher Francis Muhire said he knew of no Burundian artist, writer or musician who had ever received anything for copyright, and that none had since 2011. “Hélas, ça n’a jamais fonctionné,” he said. It has never worked. The reporters who interviewed him recorded that they tried to reach OBDA and could not.
What this means for artists#
If you are a Burundian songwriter or performer, the position is this. One body is legally able to collect your performance and broadcast money, and there is no second society to register with instead. Registering is still rational: the tariff is real, the money is being collected, and you cannot be in a distribution you are not registered for. But registration is not a payment, and nothing in the public record tells you when one arrives. The office’s most recent commitment on timing is that artists will be informed once it is ready, and no readiness date has been published.
If you are a venue, studio or broadcaster in Burundi, your exposure is real, dated to 2014 tariffs reactivated in 2023, and the office says it keeps collecting from users who resist. If you license Burundian repertoire from abroad, the point is narrower: at 2,495 registered works, the collective repertoire is small enough that direct clearance with the rights holder will usually be faster and safer than any society route, and ownership of older catalogue such as the Nakaranga recordings is exactly the question the registry is too thin to answer.
What could not be established is as much as what could. No source this desk fetched gives a figure for what OBDA has collected, in any year, under any tariff, or for what it has distributed. OBDA has not said it has never distributed, and we are not saying it on the office’s behalf; what it has said is that collection continues and artists will be told when the office is ready. The sum going to the public purse is not identified in the only interview that mentions it. And the office has no working website: its one candidate domain has failed to resolve on every check this publication has run since August 2026, which means the primary record of Burundi’s copyright money is whatever its director says to reporters. Burundi is not alone. Malawi’s society published figures that did not add up, and Madagascar’s was chaired by an official of the ministry supervising it. Burundi’s version is simpler and starker: money is going in, and nobody has published what comes out. We will keep asking for the number.
