Burkina Faso

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Thematic Focus
• Progress on Aid Effectiveness
• Achievements

Overview

Burkina Faso is one of the world's poorest countries. On the United Nations Development Programme's 2011 human development index, it ranks 181 out of 187 countries. In 2012 close to 45 percent of the population lived on less than US$1.25/day. About 7 million Burkinabe are under 14 years of age. The school dropout rate remains very high. In 2011, 52 percent of children completed primary school and 17 percent completed secondary school.

Economically, the Government of Burkina Faso has been working since 2008 to create a better business environment. According to the World Bank's 2012 Doing Business index, Burkina Faso has made progress in terms of ease of trading across borders. However, it has regressed in regard to the paying of taxes. GDP growth was significant in 2011 at 4.9 percent, although it was less significant than in 2010 at 7.9 percent (according to Statistiques mondiales, as of May 2012, in French). Since 2009, gold has supplanted cotton in export revenue. In 2011 gold production increased by 41 percent compared to 2010, while cotton production increased by 16 percent.

Politically, Burkina Faso has been stable since 1987. Presidential, legislative, and municipal elections have been held regularly since 1991, but the opposition remains weak and divided. On the other hand, civil society is very active, particularly labour unions.

Burkina Faso is making progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. This progress can be seen in three areas:

• People have more access to safe drinking water — the proportion of the population using improved drinking water rose from 60 percent in 2000 to 76 percent in 2008
• HIV/AIDS is less prevalent—down from 7.2 percent in 1997 to 2 percent since 2006
• Basic education is more available—the primary school enrolment rate rose from 44.4 percent in 2000 to 74.8 percent in 2009

Thematic Focus

CIDA's programming in Burkina Faso supports the Government of Burkina Faso's Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development 2011-2015 (SCADD) (PDF, 1.68 MB, 99 pages), which identifies four major challenges:

• Developing accelerated growth foundations
• Reinforcing human capital and promoting social protection
• Reinforcing good governance
• Integrating crosscutting priorities in development policies and programs

The strategic direction of CIDA's program in Burkina Faso is to help the country secure a future for children and youth and stimulate sustainable economic growth.

Children and youth

From 2001 to 2011, CIDA supported the Burkinabe government's ten-year primary education development plan (in French). Since 2012, CIDA has supported the Government of Burkina Faso's new initiative called the 10-year primary education development plan 2011-2020. This plan aims to improve educational services and make them more accessible and to develop a skills for employment training program for youth.

CIDA also supports the implementation of Burkina Faso's national gender policy (PDF in French, 1 MB, 56 pages), which aims to make educational services more accessible to girls.

Economic growth

CIDA continues to focus on improving microfinance and developing the agri-food sector. In cooperation with Denmark, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Capital Development Fund, CIDA is supporting the implementation of Burkina Faso's national microfinance strategy (in French). This support was directed at projects that were operational in 2009.

Progress on Aid Effectiveness

Burkina Faso adheres to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PDF, 317 KB, 23 pages).

The proportion of official development assistance allocated as budgetary support was 29 percent in 2007 and 38 percent in 2010. In addition, Burkina Faso is a model for best practices in public financial management in Africa, which is why 9 out of 10 of Burkina's main donors provide it with general budgetary support. Canada is a member of the donor coordination group, and plays a leadership role among donors in education and microfinance.

Achievements 2011-2012

Children and youth

• Helped increase the number of primary education classrooms from 40,912 in 2010 to 43,661 in 2011, representing 76 percent of the target of 57,342, set for 2015
• Contributed to increasing the primary school enrolment ratio of girls to boys from 0.88:1 in 2010 to 0.91:1 in 2011. The 2015 target is 0.92:1

Economic growth

• Contributed to the reconfiguration of Burkina Faso's largest credit union network to increase its overall performance and provide targeted populations with better quality services, including reducing the total number of credit unions in operation from 101 to 39
• Helped finance 849 entrepreneurs from the microbusiness, and small and medium-sized business sector. The 2014 target of 680 entrepreneurs has therefore been exceeded

Achievements 2010-2011

Children and youth

• Helped increase the number of primary education classrooms from 40,912 in 2010 to 43,661 in 2011, representing 76 percent of the 57,342 target set for 2015
• Contributed to increasing the girl/boy primary school enrolment ratio from 0.88/1.0 in 2010 to 0.91/1.0 in 2011, the 2015 target is 0.92/1.0

Economic growth

• Helped 314 agricultural producers—106 of them women—gain access to technical services in order to boost their productivity and competitiveness. This enabled approximately 200 dairy producers to increase milk production by 38 percent between 2007 and 2010 from 22,378 litres to 31,012 litres
• Contributed to the re-engineering of Burkina Faso's largest credit union network to increase its overall performance and provide targeted populations with better quality services—including reducing the total number of credit unions in operation from 101 to 39
• Supported centres for entrepreneurs and farmers and financed 466 new entrepreneurs from the micro, small, and medium business sector, which will help increase their productivity, the target for 2014 is to reach 680 entrepreneurs

Achievements 2009-2010

Children and youth

• Helped build almost 38,000 classrooms, as well as latrines, safe drinking water wells and housing for teachers

Economic growth

• Helped 600 smallholder farmers increase their banana production by 17 percent

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