Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou (“Ouaga”) — the capital of Burkina Faso (a landlocked Sahelian country of 272,967km², population 21 million, independent from France since 1960 — renamed Burkina Faso (“Land of Upright People”) by revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara in 1984 — now under military government following coups in January and September 2022, with significant jihadist insurgency affecting the north and east). Check current FCO/State Dept advisories before all travel.

💡 Thomas Sankara (1949–1987 — the revolutionary president who renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso, launched mass literacy and vaccination campaigns, planted millions of trees to combat desertification, reduced presidential salary, banned state cars and required ministers to fly economy class — was assassinated in a coup led by his former friend Blaise Compaoré on 15 October 1987. Sankara is considered the “African Che Guevara” and is the most beloved political figure in Burkinabè history; his grave in Ouagadougou is a pilgrimage site.

FESPACO (the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou — held biennially in February–March since 1969, the most prestigious African film festival, described as the “Cannes of African cinema”, with 100+ films from across the continent screened at outdoor cinemas throughout the city — Ouagadougou has been the continental capital of African film for 50 years) and the Ouagadougou Grand Marché and the Thomas Sankara Museum (opened 2022).

💡 FESPACO (the Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou — established 1969, held every two years in odd-numbered years, the most important African film event, attended by directors and actors from across the continent and the diaspora — has championed African cinema by providing a dedicated international platform for films that would otherwise be invisible in the global market. FESPACO has launched the careers of major African directors including Ousmane Sembene, Souleymane Cissé and Idrissa Ouedraogo.

The Ouagadougou artisan village (the largest craft market in West Africa after Dakar — with the Mossi weavers producing the stripped faso dan fani cloth, the bronze casters of the lost-wax tradition (the finest bronze casting in the Sahel, depicting hunters, warriors and festival scenes in the same tradition that produced the Benin Bronzes), the leather workers and the calabash decorators — the finest craft market in the Sahel, representing the arts of the 60+ ethnic groups of Burkina Faso).

💡 Faso dan fani (the hand-woven strip cloth of the Mossi people of Burkina Faso — woven on narrow-loom in the traditional Sahelian strip technique, with geometric patterns in cotton dyed with local indigo and madder — was designated by Thomas Sankara as the national cloth of Burkina Faso and required to be worn by government officials. The cloth, produced in Ouagadougou workshops and village looms throughout the country, is the most distinctive Burkinabè artisanal product and one of the finest traditional textiles in West Africa.

The Laongo Granite Sculpture Symposium (50km east of Ouagadougou — a sculpture park where African and international sculptors have carved directly into the granite boulders of the Laongo site since 1989, creating the largest outdoor sculpture collection in West Africa: 100+ large-scale sculptures integrated into the natural granite landscape, with the extraordinary Sahelian scrubland as backdrop — the most unusual and accessible art destination in the Sahel) and the Pik Assi traditional market of Tikar.

💡 The Laongo site (a natural formation of weathered granite inselbergs rising from the Sahelian plain, chosen as the site of the biennial International Laongo Symposium because of the extreme workability of the granite — sculptors from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas have carved monumental works directly into the boulders since 1989, creating a permanent outdoor gallery in the wild bush that has no equivalent on the African continent).

Gorom-Gorom — check current security advisory; the Sahel region of Burkina Faso has been under serious security warning since 2019. In better conditions: Gorom-Gorom (the most famous weekly market in the Sahel — a Thursday market on the edge of the desert where Tuareg, Fulani, Bella, Dogon and Mossi traders converge with camels, cattle, silver jewellery, leather goods and grains — one of the great traditional markets of the Saharan fringe, a direct continuation of the trans-Saharan trade traditions of a thousand years).

💡 The Gorom-Gorom Thursday market (a traditional Saharan trade gathering in the Oudalan province of Burkina Faso — accessible in better security conditions, attended by the nomadic pastoralist communities of the Sahel who bring camels, cattle and traditional products to trade with settled farmers — was one of the most sought-after market experiences in West Africa before the 2019 insurgency made the Sahel region inaccessible to tourists. The market continues but the surrounding region requires serious security assessment.

The Sindou Peaks (a remarkable sandstone landscape in southwestern Burkina Faso near the Malian border — a range of eroded sandstone pillars and needles rising from the savanna, with Dogon-influenced villages, traditional animist shrines and the most dramatic geological scenery in Burkina Faso — accessible from Bobo-Dioulasso in the relatively more stable southwest of the country) and Bobo-Dioulasso (the cultural capital of Burkina Faso, with the finest traditional architecture and music scene in the country).

💡 Bobo-Dioulasso (the second city of Burkina Faso, in the more fertile southwest — with the Dafra sacred fish pool, the traditional earthen mosque of Dioulassoba (one of the finest examples of Sudano-Sahelian architecture in Burkina Faso), the weekly craft market and the Bobo music scene that produced the singer Amadou and Mariam) is generally considered the most liveable and culturally rich city in Burkina Faso and has remained more stable than Ouagadougou in recent years.

A final morning in Ouagadougou: the Thomas Sankara monument and grave (a place of genuine pilgrimage for Burkinabè and West African visitors, the most visited site in the capital), the Ouaga craft village, the street food of the Zaka neighbourhood (the finest Burkinabè to (millet porridge) and sauce de gombos (okra sauce)) and the extraordinary warmth of Ouagadougou’s people — the “upright people” — before flying from Thomas Sankara International Airport (OUA).

💡 Burkina Faso’s textile tradition (the faso dan fani cloth, the bogolan-influenced mud dyeing of the Sahel region, the strip weaving of the Gourounsi and the embroidered boubou of the northern Fulani — represent the most diverse textile heritage of any Sahelian country, reflecting the meeting of three great West African cultural zones: the Saharan nomadic north, the Sahelian Mossi plateau and the Sudano-Guinean forest-savanna south). The Ouagadougou artisan village is the finest place to understand this diversity.