Where we work

CECI has been working in Burkina Faso since March 1985, with a sustained presence through its country office in Ouagadougou. This is staffed by an average of 30 people per year, depending on the number of projects underway, and consisting of:

• about fifteen volunteer cooperants supporting the local partners;
• about one dozen Burkinabe employees, plus various service providers associated with the programming.

In Burkina, CECI manages an annual budget of Cdn $1.5–2 million. Our activities are concentrated in five regions of the country, with outposts in ten provinces and larger offices in Yako and Bobo-Dioulasso.

In recognition of our contribution to the country’s development process, in 2005, after 20 years of operations there, the president of the country made CECI-Burkina a Knight of the Burkinabé Order of Merit.

Challenges

Despite notable economic progress as part of the structural adjustment begun in 1991, the country continues to confront major challenges:

• the incidence of poverty remains high, especially in rural areas (in 2003, Burkina Faso had a per capita GDP of US $220);
• there is a need to further preserve and strengthen the country’s comparative advantages in new regional and international economic zones;
• further efforts must be devoted to improving the productivity and competitiveness of agriculture and livestock production;
• the depletion of natural resources is continuing;
• there have been significant improvements in drinking water supply, which nonetheless remains insufficient to meet the needs of both urban and rural populations;
• women are still constrained by social conventions that limit their self-realization and their involvement in national political life, this despite efforts undertaken to correct this situation.

To summarize, despite expanded exports due to the monetary readjustment of 1994, the Burkinabe economy remains largely uncompetitive and dependent on outside resources.