Burkina Faso

Visited: January 2009

Duration of visit: 9 days

Capital city: Ouagadougou (Ouaga)

Population: 15 million

Visited: August 2025

Duration of visit: 3 days

Capital city: Gaborone

Population: 2.5 million (2025)

Burkina Faso travel blog reading time: 8 minutes

• Humanitarian project to help disadvantaged children access basic schooling near Bobo-Dioulasso.
• Exploring villages around Banfora on a moped with a Swedish buddy.
• With almost no tourist attractions, Ouagadougou’s unexpected highlight was shopping in a real supermarket.
• Overloaded buses packed with people and cargo piled high on the roof.

Burkina Faso was part of my three-month trip to West Africa in 2008-09, from Morocco to Ghana.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked former French colony that gained independence in 1960. Originally called the Republic of Upper Volta, it was renamed Burkina Faso in 1984. Today, it remains one of the world’s poorest countries, marked by widespread poverty and high unemployment.

The Land of Honest Men offers home to 60 different ethnic groups, that combine into one of the world’s youngest populations. Around 80% of the Burkinabe population is engaged in subsistence farming, which means that most of the crops and animals are grown for own consumption; no surplus for sale or trade.

The main export of the country is gold, while peanuts, shea nuts, sesame and cotton are some of the few big-scale cultivated crops.

Burkina Faso offers few major tourist attractions, interesting places to visit, or exciting things to do. The simple fact that it lay along the route of my three-month journey through West Africa was reason enough for me to explore it. Arguably one of the few truly notable landmarks is the Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso, one of the largest and most impressive mosques in the region.

Burkina Faso is a country of funny names, rare sights and the ideal place to realize the second part of my humanitarian project. Complicated names of the largest cities Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso are perfectly abbreviated to Ouaga and Bobo.

Ouaga is a non-spectacular capital city where I stayed for less than 24 hours. Aside from a few moderate attractions, the highlight of my stay was, ironically, a well-stocked central supermarket.

That’s right; a new, medium size supermarket. It can be quite a dramatic visit when, after months of catering my needs at simple kiosks or improvised stands, you enter a grocery store, offering fully stocked shelves with all possible products you can live without … until you see them again.

Human need for unnecessary material goods quickly awakens at the first impulses, but on the other side, I was feeling confused asking myself: “Why would I need all these consumables, since I have been doing well without any of these products recently?”

I bought two Snickers chocolates with discount to fill my body with healthy ingredients such as milk, chocolate, caramel, peanuts and palm oil. As always, American style chocolate made me lazy with stomachache only fifteen minutes later. The short-lived temptation was worth the sin.

As I kept exploring the heart of the capital city, I discovered even more places to visit that deserved attention.

Grand Marché de Ouaga offers anything a human being in Burkina Faso might need and imagine. I wandered through different sections of the market, from West African fabrics and textiles to souvenirs, fruits, vegetables, and mobile phones.

Ouagadougou surprised me with its vibrant art scene, where local artists sell their creations in markets, small studios, and street corners all over the city.

A unique orange cathedral Cathédrale de l’Immaculée-Conception is probably one of the oldest buildings in the capital, built in 1936. I was careful to avoid taking photos from inside, since some people warned me that it is disrespectful and prohibited.

The Grand Mosquée was built much later, in 1956 and already repaired three times. The peace and tranquility that reigns in the temple provided me a pleasant retreat from the street chaos.

I rented a moped in Banfora and travel around the surrounding villages with a Swedish friend I’d met on the bus the day before. That simple ride became one of the things to do I enjoyed most in the entire country.

Old mopeds had a very particular way to start. I had to pedal to gain speed, release the clutch and press the ignition button. I am used to motorbikes and learned the routine immediately, while my Swedish friend’s little attention to this procedure seems to have caused a failure in his moped.

The real highlight of Burkina Faso turned out to be its stunning waterfalls and vividly colored rock formations.

The Banfora Cascades are a series of waterfalls along the Komoé River. In the dry season, the water level was low, permitting us to have a nice swim and chill up in the river. Even more fascinating was the encounter with hippos in a small lake, which we observed from a rented canoe to get closer to them.

The Fabedougou Domes are nearly 2-billion-year-old sandstone formations shaped by ancient ocean sediments into dome-like hills and rocky spires. Completely dry during my visit, they were easy to climb and explore.

From the top I enjoyed spectacular panoramic views that made me feel as if I had the whole landscape to myself.

On the way back, an uninspected event occurred, when my friend’s moped suddenly stopped in the middle of a village, where they don’t see foreigners very frequently.

Immediately, all the children gathered, laughing and making fun of the unfortunate white people.

It didn’t take long to locate a mechanic who fixed the problem just before dusk. Once again it has been proved that in Africa every problem has a solution; only patience and time are needed.

Just outside Bobo-Dioulasso, I discovered a newly built school supported by the Icelandic NGO ABC. Its main goal is to provide education to street children who, mostly due to financial hardship, were unable to enroll in state-run schools.

Yes, even to attend state schools, parents need to pay small amount of money for notebooks, uniforms and shoes. Not everyone can afford it.

Each October, about 100 children between the ages of 6 and 9 begin attending classes. They are additionally motivated with free snacks and lunch. In two classrooms with 50 students each, they receive a quality education and a healthy diet, which gives them strength for daily walks from remote villages.

So, I embarked in an exciting task. I collected voluntary contributions from my family and friends back in my home country to support a project that would benefit poor kids without possibility to proper education. The idea was to improve chances that these kids would get at least basic education.

I spent the whole morning with the principal, the cook, and the local representative of an Icelandic NGO, buying essential supplies: books, writing boards, rice, corn, beans, and a large water tank.

Everyone was overjoyed, as the financial crisis in Iceland was reducing the source of income and future school projects are in question.

With phase 2 of my personal project to help African children during this trip, the mission was successfully completed. A total of 950 US$ was invested in education and basic needs for children in Guinea and Burkina Faso.

It is amazing how many school utensils, books, basic food and necessary tools I managed to buy. Without a single dollar of commission, directly from supporters to the kids.

Certainly, this is one of the highlights of my trip and a motivation to continue similar campaigns in the future.

If I turn Neil Armstrong’s words around, I could say: “A small step for humanity, a big step for a man.”

We will not eradicate poverty in the world overnight, but I believe that each of the participants feels a spark of satisfaction in themselves.

Thanks again for your help and cooperation my friends!

If I hadn’t seen the production process with my own eyes, I would never have guessed that the beautiful final products were actually made from old plastic bags.

The project “From plastic to fashion” has changed lives of many women who had been unemployed before.

Besides giving them a serious job, they can be more independent, providing their kids school utensils, clothes or pay electricity bills and buy food.

This excellent project improves living standards for women and reduces the number of waste bags on the streets of Bobo. It is financially supported by the Cooperation GAFREH – Groupe d’Action des Femmes pour la Relance Économique du Houet.

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest and least-visited countries in West Africa. It is landlocked, politically unstable, threatened by climate change, and caught in ongoing power struggles among elites, the military, and corrupt politicians. Even in peaceful times, the country offers relatively little exciting places to visit and things to do to its infrequent visitors.

However, I found very pleasant atmosphere with friendly, welcoming Burkinabes. Very few landmarks, national parks, or appealing cities are on the menu, and the tourist infrastructure is basic, but at least I never felt unsafe.

Renting a motorbike and traveling through the small villages on the road to Banfora was the highlight of my stay, even more memorable than the official landmarks. The whole experience felt incredibly pure and authentic.

The same goes for my time with the kids. I donated school supplies and sweet potatoes to the pupils, and they thanked me by shaking my hand, singing for me, and proudly showing what they had learned at school.

Pure Africa at its best!