Africa · Independence and the modern states
Burkina Faso
Republic · 1961–2024
Burkina Faso is a landlocked West African country of 274,223 km² bordered by Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, with its capital at Ouagadougou. Its largest ethnic group, the Mossi, arrived from the 11th century and established powerful kingdoms — Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, Yatenga, and Zandoma — whose cavalry raided as far as Timbuktu and resisted the Mali and Songhai empires.
- Type
- Republic
- Existed
- 1961–2024
- Shown on the map
- 1961–2024
- Peak area
- 276k km²
- Region
- Africa
Overview
Burkina Faso is a landlocked West African country of 274,223 km² bordered by Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, with its capital at Ouagadougou. Its largest ethnic group, the Mossi, arrived from the 11th century and established powerful kingdoms — Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, Yatenga, and Zandoma — whose cavalry raided as far as Timbuktu and resisted the Mali and Songhai empires. Iron smelting in the region dates back to 800–700 BCE, among the oldest evidence in Africa.
History
France invaded in 1896 during the Scramble for Africa, subduing local resistance — including the great Volta-Bani revolt of 1915–16 — and attaching the territory to the Upper Senegal and Niger colony in 1904. French Upper Volta was created as a separate colony on 1 March 1919, dismantled in 1932 and divided among Ivory Coast, French Sudan, and Niger, then reconstituted in 1947. It became the self-governing Republic of Upper Volta within the French Community on 11 December 1958 and gained full independence on 5 August 1960 under President Maurice Yaméogo.
Post-independence history was turbulent: Yaméogo's one-party rule fell to a 1966 coup, and Sangoulé Lamizana, Saye Zerbo, and Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo followed in quick succession amid drought and famine. A 1983 coup brought Captain Thomas Sankara to power; his revolutionary government pursued mass vaccination, literacy, land reform, women's rights, and reforestation, and renamed the country Burkina Faso — "land of the upright people" — on 4 August 1984. Sankara was assassinated in Blaise Compaoré's 1987 coup; Compaoré ruled until a popular uprising forced his resignation in October 2014. After elections brought Roch Marc Christian Kaboré to power in 2015, a jihadist insurgency spread across the country, killing thousands and displacing over a million. Two coups in 2022 installed Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who led Burkina Faso out of ECOWAS into the Alliance of Sahel States with Mali and Niger.
Later history and present status
Of its roughly 22–23 million people, about 52 percent are Mossi; Islam is the religion of about 64 percent, with 26 percent Christian. One of the world's least-developed countries, Burkina Faso relies on cotton and gold mining; Mooré, Dyula, Fula, and Bissa are official languages, with French demoted to a working language in 2024.
Common questions
- What was Burkina Faso?
- Burkina Faso is a landlocked West African country of 274,223 km² bordered by Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, with its capital at Ouagadougou. Its largest ethnic group, the Mossi, arrived from the 11th century and established powerful kingdoms — Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, Yatenga, and Zandoma — whose cavalry raided as far as Timbuktu and resisted the Mali and Songhai empires.
- When did Burkina Faso exist?
- Burkina Faso existed 1961–2024. On this map it is drawn 1961–2024.
- How large was Burkina Faso?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Burkina Faso covered about 276,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- Who ruled Burkina Faso?
- France invaded in 1896 during the Scramble for Africa, subduing local resistance — including the great Volta-Bani revolt of 1915–16 — and attaching the territory to the Upper Senegal and Niger colony in 1904. French Upper Volta was created as a separate colony on 1 March 1919, dismantled in 1932 and divided among Ivory Coast, French Sudan, and Niger, then reconstituted in 1947.
- What is the present status of Burkina Faso?
- Of its roughly 22–23 million people, about 52 percent are Mossi; Islam is the religion of about 64 percent, with 26 percent Christian. One of the world's least-developed countries, Burkina Faso relies on cotton and gold mining; Mooré, Dyula, Fula, and Bissa are official languages, with French demoted to a working language in 2024.
Sources
Every source below was consulted while writing this entry.
- Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso
This entry was written from the sources above and last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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