Mossi kingdoms became a gold-rich, still struggling Sahel state
Burkina Faso, a landlocked West African state of about 23 million people with Ouagadougou as its capital, took its name in 1984 from two local languages: Burkina, upright in Mooré, and Faso, fatherland in Dyula. Before that it was Upper Volta, named for the rivers crossing it.
The country covers 274,223 square kilometres, ringed by Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. It holds reserves of gold, manganese, copper and limestone, yet remains among the least developed nations, with a GDP of about $16.2 billion in 2022. Roughly 63.8 per cent of people are Muslim and 26.3 per cent Christian, and more than half speak Mooré among over 60 indigenous languages. French lost its role as an official language in January 2024.
Hunter-gatherers lived in the north-west from 14,000 to 5,000 BC, and the oldest local iron smelting, from 800 to 700 BC, is part of a World Heritage Site. The Mossi, now the largest group, founded kingdoms such as Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo and Yatenga from the eleventh century; their warriors raided Timbuktu in the 1330s but lost to Songhai at Kobi in 1483. In the eighteenth century the Gwiriko Empire rose at Bobo-Dioulasso.
France made the area a protectorate in 1896, and an 1898 Franco-British convention drew its borders. Local fighters in the Volta-Bani War of 1915–16 defeated French troops before France sent its largest colonial expeditionary force to crush them. The colony of Upper Volta was created in 1919, carved up among its neighbours in 1932 and revived in 1947; its old flag's three colours stood for the Black, White and Red Volta.
Independence came on 5 August 1960 under Maurice Yaméogo, who soon banned all rival parties and fell in the 1966 coup that installed Sangoulé Lamizana, whose rule coincided with devastating Sahel drought. Saye Zerbo ousted Lamizana in 1980, and repeated coups followed. Today the country is a semi-presidential republic suspended from the African Union, and since 2025 it has left ECOWAS and La Francophonie after helping found the Alliance of Sahel States.
Source: Burkina Faso
