ABOUT
Portrait — The River-Man
The hills of Burundi never truly leave you. They embrace the heart like a childhood lullaby, whisper in the veins, and keep watch in moments of silence.
Then came exile. Belgium welcomed him with its brick streets and grey mornings. But his heart remained tethered to the shores of the Great Lakes. From that tearing apart was born a deep voice, shaped by long journeys, gentle and capable of naming pain without betraying it — above all engaged, for to keep silent is also to consent to forgetting.
He found the answer one evening in Bujumbura: one does not choose between two shores. One becomes the river.
JOURNEY
Biography
Origins
B. Claude Ntahuga was born on 1 November 1975 in Bujumbura, into a family where two worlds met: a father of Tutsi descent, from the Muramvya nobility, and a mother of Hutu origin, survivor of the 1972 massacres. From this improbable union in a country fractured by ethnic lines was born a child who would grow up with the question of identity as a permanent travelling companion.
His childhood unfolded between the alleys of Bwiza and Ngagara, working-class neighbourhoods of Bujumbura where children’s laughter, the smells of the central market and the whispered conversations of adults about a painful past all mingled together.
Exile and commitment
It is in Belgium that he rebuilds his life. He gets politically involved with Ecolo, becoming political secretary in Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, and campaigns for human rights with the ITEKA League. Under thirty, he calls minister Louis Michel’s office to secure support for the peace caravan in Burundi — and obtains it.
In 2003 he founded IRIBA, an NGO running awareness campaigns through mobile cinema in Burundi. From 2008 to 2013 he served as a private consultant to the President of Burundi. In 2009 the newspaper Iwacu listed him among the 50 figures advancing Burundi.
The field man
An expert in communication, international cooperation and international relations, Ntahuga has made the world his field of human inquiry. Mali, Niger, DRC, Rwanda, Togo, Uganda, Benin, Ghana, Chad, South Africa, Libya — he has worked wherever wounds remain open, wherever fragile hopes still hold.
A documentary filmmaker by training, he co-directed «Pour mieux s’entendre», screened for more than 700 dignitaries at Flagey and adapted in a Kirundi version for a 12-month peace caravan across Burundi.
The writer
By deciding to write The Song of the Shores, Claude Ntahuga consented to enter a trunk buried deep in his memory. His first novel is not a settling of scores: it is a discreet but solid stone laid in the wall of silence.
« I wanted to give voice to this fragile métissage — a Tutsi father, a Hutu mother — who, by force of circumstance, became a symbol of resistance in a fractured country. »
— Author’s note, 2026
Approach & writing style
B. Claude Ntahuga’s language is nourished by two living sources: Kirundi, his mother tongue, with its particular musicality and metaphors rooted in the life of the hills; and French, the language of exile and literary training, which he inhabits with rigour and a certain classical elegance.
Trained both in poetry and in documentary journalism, he develops a writing style that oscillates between factual precision and the breath of memory. He does not invent: he bears witness, recomposes, restores. His favourite themes — exile, memory, brotherhood, the dialogue of cultures, identity as a permanent process — are those of a life lived at the crossroads of several worlds.
His literary references reflect this double belonging: Ahmadou Kourouma, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alain Mabanckou, Mongo Beti and Camara Laye sit alongside Albert Camus and Marguerite Yourcenar. And always in the background, the great figure of Amin Maalouf.
« To write is to build a bridge. A bridge between the living and the departed, between past generations and those to come, between those who have suffered and those who must understand. »
— B. Claude Ntahuga
Biographical milestones
Naissance
Premier exil
Fondation d'IRIBA
Forum des Jeunes Nord-Sud
Engagement politique
« Pour mieux s'entendre »
Consultant présidence Burundi
Distinction Iwacu
Bien dans mes baskets
Le chant des rives
Kidal, point de rupture
MOFTAL EDITIONS
Publisher's Note of Intent
« Upon discovering this manuscript, we were immediately struck by the human power of the narrative and by its ability to give resonance to a life trajectory that could have been ordinary, had the wounds of a people's history not decided otherwise. Through family tensions, the trials the author has gone through, and the Burundian landscapes that accompany the story, The Song of the Shores transcends mere autobiographical testimony.
This text struck us as carrying a memory, a sensibility, and a reflection that deserved to be shared. At Moftal Editions, we are committed to works that question the world while remaining deeply human; this novel imposed itself on us by its sincerity, its singularity, and the universal scope of its message. »
— Mika Diallo, Director of Moftal Editions
Note on the manuscript