The current Force Commander is Lt Gen. Diomede Ndegeya. He assumed the role in August 2020.
He is the second Burundian senior military officer to serve in the rotational position after Lt. Gen. Silas Ntigurirwa, who was Force Commander from 2013 and 2014.
Lt. Gen. Ndegeya was born in December 1963, and career in the military spans 40 years.
He was admitted for the officer cadet course to the Institut Supérieur des Cadres Militaires (ISCAM) in August 1982 at the Burundi Military Academy.
Prior to joining AMISOM, he was a Senior Advisor to the Minister of Defence in Burundi.
He has held various command and control positions at both operational and strategic levels in the Burundi National Defence Forces (BNDF).
From May 2009 to November 2012, he was the Deputy Chief of Army for the BNDF and permanent member of the National Commission of Disarmament Demobilisation Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR). He was instrumental in the design and implementation of the SSR Policy in Burundi.
He also headed the training division of BNDF and ensured the implementation of peace-building strategies and programmes to demobilise and reintegrate former combatants in Burundi.
He also served as the Defence Attaché at the Burundian Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
From 2007 to 2009, he was a senior member of the BNDF AMISOM pre-deployment team. He was also part of a reconnaissance mission to the Bay and Bakool regions of Somalia ahead of AMISOM’s troop deployment to the areas.
Lt. Gen. Ndegeya holds a Master’s degree in Technical Sciences and a Bachelor’s in Management and Economic Sciences. He trained at the artillery Institute in Russia; and studied command and defence strategy at the Chinese Defence University and the Institut Des Hautes Etudes De Défense Nationale (IHEDN) in France.
He has published several research papers on peacekeeping missions in Africa including managing infantry soldiers, peacekeeping, defence diplomacy, DDR and SSR.