Burkina Faso Exploitation-Resistance

This year, the economy is expected to perform better with a projected 7 percent growth rate partly linked to an upsurge in gold exports and a projected stronger harvest, but vulnerability remains. Just under half of the population lives in poverty, and a lack of economic diversity means a significant proportion of Burkinabe are reliant on the cotton sector, which is vulnerable to drought and severe price fluctuations.

The Burkinabe government has beefed up its military presence on the Mali border. US drones are in operation, partly operating out of Ouagadougou under Operation Creek Sand, according to a Washington Post report, though US officials have not officially acknowledged this.

Made up of about 1,000 educated and non-educated women, it is a highly organised and active cooperative of women who are aware of their potential to affect change, and to secure greater access to means of production including land, equipment, training and material inputs. Groups of women like this have been able to obtain larger parcels of land through lobbying local leaders.

Let me give an example. In 1999, a rural Burkinabé woman, Nagbila Aisseta, accepted ↑ the Hunger Project Africa Prize awarded to the 'women farmers of Africa'. She was a poor woman aged 35 who had not left her village since birth, had never entered a car, knew nothing at all of modern life, but who, little by little, had developed initiatives to create a large organisation involved in livestock farming, agriculture, and market gardening to tackle malnutrition in her area. She was invited to receive her prize at a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters and asked to submit her speech prior to the event in the national Mooré language. It was to be translated into English, which she did not speak, for another person to read out during the ceremony. But she said “No. If it is me that has received the prize then I should speak directly to those who gave it to me. The way I was brought up, when you thank someone you thank them directly, without a go-between.” She asked the United Nations to find a Burkinabé interpreter who could understand both Mooré and English in order to ensure simultaneous interpretation. And this is how it was done. She knew her rights -  in this case the right to speak!