Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso launched an effort on Sunday to offer identity cards to hundreds of women chased from their village for alleged witchcraft and often forced to live on society’s periphery in abject poverty. ”We are here to tell them, you are citizens,” Burkinabe Human Rights Minister Monique Ilboudo told the country’s TNB public television station.

Rescuers in Burkina Faso called off a search on Monday after a flooded mine shaft collapsed, leaving dozens of illegal gold panners feared dead buried beneath tons of waterlogged dirt, local residents said. The official toll from Thursday’s accident in Poura district was three dead and 10 reported missing but residents said 46 were still believed to be underground.

An appeals court in Burkina Faso on Wednesday confirmed the scrapping of a case against a security official who was the sole suspect in the 1998 murder of journalist Norbert Zongo. The court said an appeal against last month’s judiciary decision to drop the case against Marcel Kafando was ”inadmissible”.

The prime minister of Burkina Faso, Paramanga Ernest Yonli, has handed in his resignation to President Blaise Compaore, the president’s office announced on Wednesday. His resignation comes almost two months after presidential elections held on November 13.

Long-time ruler Blaise Compaore took the oath of office on Tuesday for another term as elected president of Burkina Faso, a West African nation whose people are among the world’s poorest. Nearly a dozen African leaders looked on as Compaore took the oath of office after a landslide November re-election for another five-year term.

The West African cotton state of Burkina Faso was set to choose a president on Sunday amid opposition charges of vote rigging and abuses by the president, widely expected to return to power. President Blaise Compaore, in office for 18 years, is standing for a third time in one of the poorest countries of Africa.

Heads of state from 17 African countries on Wednesday attended the opening of an African Union summit in Burkina Faso to craft a jobs creation plan to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. The summit was addressed by Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore, who welcomed his fellow leaders to the two-day meeting.

The arrest this week of a 63-year-old woman in Burkina Faso accused of circumcising 16 young girls has brought home to many that genital mutilation is still widespread in the West African state, despite being outlawed. She sliced off parts of the girls’ genitalia under driving rain ”in the backyard, where they usually kill chickens”.

The government of Burkina Faso has urged traditional healers in West Africa to collaborate with scientific researchers in the fight against HIV/Aids by using herbal treatments to address Aids-related illnesses such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea. The fourth International Traditional Medicine Show opened this week in Burkina Faso.

Burkina Faso’s Minister of Defence, General Kouame Lougue, was sacked at the weekend, a week after the state prosecutor revealed that he had been questioned in connection with a coup plot against President Blaise Campaore. Lougue had until recently been viewed as a loyal supporter of the president.