Soldiers intervened to save the country from failing civilian leadership but no one knows what is meant to happen next
The capital came under multiple attacks on Friday when five armed men opened fire on passersby before heading towards the embassy
The u is disappearing all over Africa, and maybe the Gates Foundation is to blame.
For all its flaws, the democratic spirit at Fespaco makes it unique among the worldās movie events.
President Blaise Compaore appointed a former ambassador to France as the new prime minister, hoping to restore stability after violent protests.
Burkina Faso’s president, facing a military mutiny, strove to reassert his authority on Friday after mass protests and a night when soldiers ran riot.
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/ 22 November 2010
Burkina Faso voted on Sunday in a presidential poll, which appeared to generate little enthusiasm and was expected to keep Blaise Compaore in power.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in several towns in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, on Wednesday to protest the rising cost of living as part of a three-day general strike. In the capital, Ouagadougou, demonstrators started marching from the headquarters of the main unions and the city centre.
A coalition of civil society organisations that on Saturday mobilised several thousand people to take to the streets of Ouagadougou and other towns and cities in Burkina Faso has threatened a nationwide strike if the government does not find a way to lower prices.
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/ 26 February 2008
World economic growth could miss the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) forecast of 4,1% this year if United States and European banks disclose more major losses on the subprime market, the head of the IMF said on Monday. Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned that emerging economies would not escape the effects of the slowdown in rich countries.
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/ 25 February 2008
Rapid economic growth rates in Africa are at risk from a global downturn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told West African leaders on Monday. The IMF has cut its 2008 global growth projection to 4,1%, down from 4,9% last year, blaming the weak outlook in the United States and Europe.
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/ 9 December 2007
The growing promotion of environmentally-friendly biofuels is raising questions for Africa: Are such fuels a threat to food security or a golden opportunity to cut down on fossil fuel bills? About 300 experts gathered earlier this month in the capital of the non-oil producing West African nation of Burkina Faso to debate the pros and cons of biofuel generation on the continent.
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/ 27 November 2007
Leaders of Côte d’Ivoire were to meet on Tuesday with President Blaise Compaore of neighbouring Burkina Faso to fine-tune details of a peace deal brokered by him. Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo and his Prime Minister Guillaume Soro will travel to Burkina Faso to discuss and sign supplemetary sections to the peace accords.
Nigerian director Newton Aduaka lifted the top prize at Africa’s most prestigious film festival for Ezra, the tale of a child soldier who struggles to readapt after Sierra Leone’s civil war. Aduaka was awarded the Golden Stallion of Yennenga at the closing ceremony of the Fespaco film festival in Ouagadougou on Saturday.
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/ 23 February 2007
Africa’s biggest film festival opens on Saturday in the capital of Burkina Faso hoping for a revival of the continent’s ailing cinema industry. The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, or Fespaco, which runs from February 24 to March 3, is a two-yearly event gathering more than 3 000 film types from across the continent.
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/ 20 January 2007
West Africa plans to ask the European Union for a two-year delay to a planned economic partnership agreement (EPA), leaders said at a summit on Friday, but the EU’s executive Commission ruled out a postponement. Brussels hopes to negotiate far-reaching EPAs with six regions in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific to come into force by January 1 2008.
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/ 10 January 2007
For Mady DabonĆ©, Europe beckons. ”Staying here … is misery,” says the 30-year-old from the village of Begdo in eastern Burkina Faso, adding that several of his friends are already abroad. ”I have about 20 of them in Italy and Spain. They have all done well, even though they suffered at the beginning.”
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/ 11 December 2006
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.
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/ 27 September 2006
South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is battling to jumpstart Côte d’Ivoire’s stalled peace process, ended talks on Tuesday with President Laurent Gbabgo and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore without releasing any results. Gbagbo boycotted the talks between the main parties to the conflict last week at the United Nations headquarters in New York on grounds that the peace process had ”failed”.
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.
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/ 20 December 2005
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.
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/ 13 November 2005
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.
A South African film celebrating a reporter’s struggle against apartheid has taken top honours at Africa’s premier film festival. Drum, by South African director Zola Maseko, picked up the Gold Talon prize for best feature-length film late on Saturday at the closing of the 19th Panafrican Film and Television Festival.
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/ 8 September 2004
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”.
When Frank Alain Kabore — the manager of a wildlife concession in Burkina Faso — looks back, he recalls that days used to go by without him seeing an elephant in the reserve, a decade ago. Today, he comes across one every 100m. It’s an environmental success story in this West African country that may yet return to haunt it.
It is an article of faith in development circles that assisting girls to complete their education — and postponing the age at which they have children — benefits both the girls and the communities they live in. This truth is proving difficult to entrench in Burkina Faso, however, where early marriages are often the norm.
Meningitis has killed 403 people between 1 January and 7 March 2004 in Burkina Faso, where 2 060 cases of the disease have been reported. According to the Ministry of Health, the disease has reached epidemic proportions in two of the country’s 53 districts -Ć¢ā¬ā Diebougou in the south west and Nanoro in the central region.
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/ 25 February 2004
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.
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/ 16 February 2004
Health workers in Burkina Faso have called for a more open discussion of issues related to sexuality and abortion. This follows the release of a report by the Demographic Research and Study Unit, which found that up to 8 000 illegal abortions take place each year in the country’s capital, Ouagadougou.