Background
Barthélémy Bisengimana was born on May 12, 1936, at Kibumba in Kivu near the Rwanda border.
Barthélémy Bisengimana was born on May 12, 1936, at Kibumba in Kivu near the Rwanda border.
He trained as a civil engineer at Lovanium University between 1956 and 1961 and then studied telecommunications and electronic engineering at the Universite Libre at Brussels between 1961 and in 1963.
Returning home, he became head of the radio section in the Posts and Telecommunications organisation and headed a team working on satellite communications between 1963 and 1965, before becoming the technical councillor at the Presidency.
With this unusual background of specialist engineering, he was spotted by Mobutu as a man of exceptional administrative ability and in 1966 he was made Director-General in charge of technical questions at the Presidency.
His technical and engineering background has made him a keen enthusiast for the idea of building a vast 1,000-mile power line from the Inga Dam right across the country to supply the copper industry in Shaba (Katanga).
This multi-million-pound project has political implications as it would tie Shaba to the capital with its “electrical umbilical cord” much closer than ever before.
Capable, trusted and with a reputation for being a good administrator, he tends to try and do too much himself and docs not delegate responsibility easily. He once had a real role in policy making at the Presidency and he is still the man who acts as an intermediary between the President and the outside world.
But he is now rather an executor of policy than a policy maker. A Bahiwa by tribe, he is generally regarded as a Tutsi from Rwanda and this would count against him politically if he had any political pretensions. He holds no position in the party or Political Bureau.