Overview

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than 90% of its population engaged in subsistence farming in the Sahel. Its name means “Land of the Upright People.”

Burkina Faso is also one of the most successful Hunger Project countries in Africa, having mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to establish 15 epicenters – centers of mobilization and action through which clusters of villages work together to meet all their basic needs.

 Five of these epicenters have already completed the five-year journey from abject poverty to full self-reliance. Infant mortality and maternal mortality are dramatically reduced. Women are literate, gain access to credit, improve their farms and incomes, and have equal voice in decision making. Women and men work together to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Burkina Faso is particularly loved in The Hunger Project family, as it is home to Nagbila Aisetta, a formerly illiterate and impoverished third wife abandoned by her husband, who was chosen in 1999 to receive the Africa Prize for Leadership on behalf of all 100 million women food farmers in Africa – thus officially launching the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI). Having never previously left her village, she traveled to New York, addressed 1,200 people at a black-tie dinner in New York, and returned to her country accompanied by Hunger Project investors from 10 countries – meeting with the Prime Minister, addressing hundreds of thousands of people, and being named “Woman of the Year” two years in a row.

The Hunger Project-Burkina Faso was established in 1996 in partnership with 1990 Africa Prize Laureate Bernard Oudraeogo, the founder of Naam - Africa’s largest grassroots development movement.

The Hunger Project-Burkina Faso has been led from its inception by Prof. Idrissa Ousmane Dicko, one of the most respected agricultural scientists in his country and recipient of his nation’s highest award. Click here for a full chronology of reports.