[2] The first tea cultivation trials in Burundi were set up at the Gisozi Agronomic Research Station in 1963.

[3] The OTB was expected to supplement the income of tea growers and contribute substantially to the country's foreign exchange.

It also had a temporary workforce supplying about eight million man-days per year, equivalent to about 4,000 full-time workers, but only employed seasonally.

[2] A new private company, Promotion du Thé de Mwaro (PROTHEM), started operations in 2011 with some difficulty.

[7] In July 2014 Ernest Mberamiheto, Minister of Good Governance and Privatization, answered questions in a National Assembly debate.

Companies that had been recommended for privatization over a five-year period included SOSUMO,[a] SIP,[b] SRDI ,[c] OTB,[d] ALM,[e] COGERCO,[f] LNBTP[g] and ONATOUR.

[h] It was recommended that measures be put in place to prevent the assets of these companies being abused in the interim before privatization occurred.

OTB accused PROTHEM of picking green leaf in the Commune of Rusaka, where it did not have its own plantations.

Another factor for a gradual long term decline is that tea growers were not being paid enough and are abandoning their fields, or substituting other crops.