Over the last one month Burundi has been in the news more times than it was the whole of 2014. A decision by the country’s president Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term in office set off a series of events that culminated into a failed coup two weeks ago.

Donors withdrew their support for the country’s presidential election set for June after violent protests broke out  killing at least 30 people and displacing nearly 150,000 people into neighboring countries.

The tiny East African nation south of Rwanda, which emerged from a decade long civil war in 2005, is still almost entirely dependent on foreign aid to support its national budget with European states contributing more than half of this.

Still determined to run for an unconstitutional third term, Nkurunziza  has decided to finance the controversial election through a crowdfunding initiative.

On Tuesday, the Burundian presidency posted a notice on its official Facebook page asking citizens to donate to an account named “ELECTIONS 2015” at the Bank of the Republic of Burundi.

“The government invites patriotic citizens … to make a voluntary contribution to push forward the efforts already agreed to by other friends of Burundi,” Global Post interpreted the French-language plea for funding as saying.

Some Burundians expressed their disgusts, while other supported the initiative in the comment section of the post.

Regardless of the outcome, this initiative would go down history books as the first time any African government raised funds for an election via Facebook and could see other despots across the continent follow suit when donor money runs dry.