Author’s note―Bonaventure Nicimpaye is a lawyer by training, with a specialization in International Relations. He pursued a career that began in 1973 in the public sector as a Legal Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Burundi, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then to the Presidency of the Republic. He then led the University of Burundi as Dean, from December 1977 to May 1981. After this mandate, he turned to the private sector by creating INTERCONTACT SERVICES, a company specializing in the provision of legal, administrative, and logistical services in favor of international companies and organizations. This biography looks back on a life marked by the values of efficiency, transparency, and integrity.
The day after Burundi’s historic qualifying match against Gabon, on March 23, 2019, for the final phase of the African Cup of Nations football (CAN), we met in Bonaventure Nicimpaye’s office for our first writing session, which was more of an exercise in dialogue, sizing each other up, and preparing our minds for the best ways to achieve our common goal: writing one’s memoirs. It was about how to write the adventures we have lived, the way we remember them, and how we build on our reminiscences, a life story worthy of inspiring a reader.
It was necessary to take into account the current tendency to confuse in the same set, keeping a diary, writing a memoir, publishing an autobiography, in short, everything that speaks of oneself. And, during this first session we talked about many different aspects of a man’s life, as he diplomatically communicated his perspectives towards these notions, and in particular about his spiritual journey through the Communauté Chemin Neuf, a Catholic community birthed out of an ecumenical vocation in 1992, and which did not fail to influence his way of seeing the world and business.
In this same manner, he draws my attention to a passage from the Holy Bible: “What have you that you have not received? And, if you have received it, why do you boast, as if you had not received it? “. Indeed, even if he recognizes having worked hard in his life, he is indebted to God, and appreciates with gratitude and humility the importance of the values, the key role, and the merit of the various people, within his family, in his neighborhood and in his company, who helped him pave the way to success.
He then informs me that he was marked by his experiences as a boy scout, traveling, and international relations, and goes back to the personalities on his path who strongly influenced him, such as Father Gabriel Barakana, former Prime Minister Albin Nyamoya, Ambassador Laurent Nzeyimana, Doctor Charles Bitariho, and Mr. Dominique Shiramanga.
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On the other hand, I personally knew Mr. Nicimpaye through his son, Aristide, a person who figures as one of my best friends in life. I had the chance to meet Aristide in Nairobi, almost 20 years ago, when we attended the same higher learning institution, the United States International University Africa campus.
For the record: we lived together in the same apartment in Kenya. Aristide saw me and helped me become the person I am today. When I started writing my first novel, Greener On The Other Side during the last week of October of 2012, he was the first to know about it, as well as the first to support me in this literary adventure. Aristide, after having discussed it with his father, recommended me.
Initially, Mr. Nicimpaye wanted to write something for his children and grandchildren, an official way to leave a mark on this earth. Why leave a trace, one might ask? Men have always been particularly interested in the notion of inheritance, and in this context, it is important to know that Mr. Nicimpaye hardly knew his father, not even a photograph remains of him, and therefore he does not want his children to find themselves in a comparable situation.
In all honesty, I found it difficult to write everything down while Mr. Nicimpaye was speaking, it is so fascinating to understand someone’s life because Burundian tradition and literature, in its slightly anemic state, is largely based on orality. However, it is well known that writing a book is one of the main ways of transmitting knowledge and ideas from generation to generation.
I thank him for entrusting me with such a delicate mission. I am flattered, and this motivation allows us to organize the best way forward, insisting that he can publish his book.
We meet, we exchange, and the idea of publishing is not a priority on his part. Discarded, unthinkable! For what? We live in a negative environment, it can be dangerous to write because we expose ourselves, why this risk? Mr. Nicimpaye has nothing to defend against public opinion. He only owes an explanation to those he cares the most about!
He continues the writing session by giving me a lesson on “what it takes to be qualified for life”: the importance of allies, discipline, understanding the nature of adversity, and creating your own luck by taking responsibility.
Listening to him, one feels the urge to capture a special place, time, people, and moments, somehow bringing together a time that has gone forever, and at the same time wanting it back, re-creating it again on a page. We have the idea of recording… On the first Sunday of May of 2019, Mr. Nicimpaye begins to make recordings which launches the project to the next phase.
Throughout the discussion, Mr. Nicimpaye keeps this impenetrable gaze, his voice is calm. His office, with a confident and elegant look that one would expect from a diplomat, lends itself well to the moment. As the project progressed, I approached journalist and writer, Roland Rugero, for professional editorial support, as part of his nascent project, the Burundian publishing company, Edition Gusoma.
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For those who have received a lot, much will be asked: Mr. Nicimpaye has the privilege of having lived a long time, but above all, having founded and managed the same company for 40 consecutive years, based on the same values of efficiency, of transparency, and integrity throughout these four decades… He succeeded in this challenge thanks to his permanent desire to provide the best possible service available. Everything he did had to be rated “Very well done” ―Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. He admits being extremely lucky to have a wife with whom he shared this taste for perfection. Every detail counted so that these activities generated income and contributed to the maintenance of their social and professional reputation. It’s this culture of excellence that will earn Intercontact Services the acquisition of an invaluable capital: trust.
Those who fail to tarnish the image of your company will sometimes try to imitate you. Which is quite normal, in this Burundi where we imitate bakeries, pharmacies, kiosks on the corner of the street, etc. But many of them have realized that it is not enough to brandish such a label of what you can or want to do, you still have to attract customers. For this, you need personality, an identity, rigor and consistency. These are the values that guided Mr. Nicimpaye. His credibility depended on it.
One day, someone asked him how he managed to have a forty-year-old business? The question left him speechless. He ended up answering that it was respect for the law.
The public authorities will recognize these values of integrity, as evidenced by the Prize of the Burundian Revenue Office (OBR) obtained in 2021! The Minister of Finance, before the National Assembly, announced the same year that Intercontact Services was the only broker who pays his taxes in Burundi.
By respecting the law, you’re at peace and protected. You also gain the respect of authority. Everyone knows that Mr. Nicimpaye respects authority, the law, and that he does not kneel before anyone. What one loses here by taking the straight road, one recovers by good reputation. These are the things that matter; this aspect of integrity will constantly come up in the communication on the values that underpin his brand. When his successors tell him that these values serve them, he gives thanks to God.
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Today, Mr. Nicimpaye is 75 years old. He’s retired, and this transition to retirement generally sounds like a loss. A sum of losses, more exactly: loss of identity since one’s functions in the company that one created were for the most part merged with one’s personality. Added to this is a kind of loss of social recognition, that is to say, the progressive exclusion from a certain social network made up of professionally active people, who create things, who constantly measure themselves against the challenges of life, who try to build projects, (kwubaka in Kirundi). Only God knows how exhilarating and tiring it is. More than anything, what he feels the most is the loss of the rhythm of life to which he had been accustomed to for forty years; a daily life on the run, not to mention that the transition to retirement is a generational marker.
One would almost be tempted to say that to become retired is to fall into the category of the inactive lot. However, Mr. Nicimpaye doesn’t feel inactive. He has the impression of having simply changed the register of life, now with new possibilities. In particular, he engages in physical and spiritual exercises. There is walking and swimming, sometimes in a group, sometimes, alone. Also, he continues to participate in the activities of the Communauté du Chemin Neuf, to the extent of his strength, which is constantly declining, of course. He leads a quiet life, devoid of all stress, far from the frantic race that is the daily life of an entrepreneur, on the run. Today, I find a new balance, I accept the passage of time. I finally find the time to indulge in my hobbies.
He now enjoys a different perspective on the company he created, a privileged view that gives him the fact that he is no longer involved in the daily life of Intercontact Services. Mr. Nicimpaye has confidence in the new generation.
Companies around the world are beginning to replace human personnel with artificial intelligence: how, in this context of fierce inter-human and soon human-machine competition, will Burundi be able to position itself when we don’t have competent teams in terms of training and experience?
If our country is to hope to achieve high growth and a significant and rapid reduction in poverty, the major challenges facing Burundi are mainly the establishment of lasting peace and security, the construction of stable institutions committed on the development, establishment and maintenance of a macro-economic environment conducive to investment, State disengagement from the productive sector and promotion of the private sector, promotion of non-traditional methods, reduction of indebtedness, development of human capital, as well as an effective public health policy including reduction of the population growth rate. Among all these priorities, there is one on which Mr. Nicimpaye has enough experience in, to be able to express himself on. It is the issue of human capital.
With all that he has been through, he often wonders what to do with all his experience in the service sector, and the development of human capital, and how to exploit both the potential of the tertiary sector, which is within our reach here in Burundi, by betting in particular on the physical assets of the country, as well as the diaspora which specializes around the world, but who remain confined to limited contributions to national life.
Several avenues are available to us to create wealth, in particular by outsourcing the human resources of companies. What attracts large companies to this process, especially in African countries, is mainly the rapid growth of their economies and their cheap labor force. If outsourcing refers to dubious exploitative intent (as we will have seen with the outsourcing scandals in Asian countries), this can have a positive impact on the populations of these developing economies.
In Africa, several countries compete in global outsourcing markets. For example, Kenya and Nigeria export business and IT services primarily to UK and US-based customers, relying on lack of jet lag, cultural similarities, linguistic proximity and quality of infrastructure. Outsourcing is also beneficial for Africa (Burundi) and contributes to the fight against youth unemployment and underemployment, thus stimulating economic growth. Thus, companies that outsource to Africa include multinationals like Orange, Vodafone, Microsoft, Intel, Virgin, among many others.
There are a host of services that can be effectively outsourced to Africa, including IT support, data entry and database management, call center services, data tagging, transcription, creation and content writing, engineering services, software development, virtual assistance, web analytics, and more. All of this work can be done remotely and on the basis of an independent contract.
Gradually, the African continent can align a highly qualified labor force, responding to the problem of unemployment which mainly affects young people on the continent. Research has also shown that workforces mobilized for example through service outsourcing exhibit high levels of emotional intelligence, low attrition rates and are extremely hardworking and dependable, considering the employment entrusted as an opportunity for social demarcation compared to local hiring…
Hiring web developers, content writers, photo editors, customer service representatives, and transcription or data labeling specialists in Burundi would be one of the strategies to attract foreign investors whose country so badly needs, by responding to the urgency of job creation by diversifying the sectors of intervention of the Burundian economy. The primary sector, which employs more than 80% of Burundians, is increasingly showing its limits with the scarcity of land and the means of production that have changed little over the years. If the national meeting is set for 2060 to make Burundi “a developed nation”, we must be creative, and strategic and keep in mind that time passes quickly, so quickly.
This work, Mr. Nicimpaye will have written for his children and grandchildren, but also for the young people of Burundi of today and tomorrow, who will learn so much about the attitude that makes it possible to win in life, in a society as complex as ours.
Lionel Ntasano 