At least eight people died on Saturday evening July 18 in Bujumbura during a stampede that occurred at the end of the gathering of a famous Burundian evangelical preacher, Burundi police said on Sunday. Thousands of people attended the sermon of Chris Ndikumana, very popular in French-speaking Africa and whose YouTube channel is followed by more than a million people.
“There were so many people and everyone wanted to go out at the same time at the end of the crusade,” the name given to this gathering, explained a professor at the Kamenge Technical School, north of Bujumbura, where the event took place. “It was late at night. There is a stampede and people have been trampled,” he continued.
Eight worshipers died and nine were injured, according to Burundian police. The organizers did not comment after the incident.
Other hustles
A former Belgian colony independent since 1963, Burundi, a landlocked African country in the Great Lakes region of around 15 million inhabitants, is the poorest country in the world, according to a 2024 World Bank ranking. The evangelical churches, characterized by their fervor and which are proliferating in Africa, particularly against a backdrop of poverty, have experienced several upheavals in recent years.
In 2020, at least twenty people were killed in Tanzania, neighboring Burundi, after a preacher poured “holy oil” in an open-air stadium. Many people had been trampled when the faithful rushed for the oil supposed to heal them. Preacher Boniface Mwamposa, who nicknames himself “the apostle”, tried to flee after the tragedy but was caught by the police. Some 233,000 people continue to follow him on his YouTube channel.
In 2022, at least 29 people, including eleven children, died in Monrovia, capital of Liberia, during a crowd caused by thugs seeking to rob the faithful after a major evangelical gathering.
