A Climate Under Siege: Environmental Justice and Colonial Extraction

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km². In 2024, the country had an estimated population of approximately 23,286,000.

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Ruins of Loropédi 

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Bravia Hotel Ouagadougou

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Food

Burkina Faso is known for mangoes. Burkina Faso's traditional cuisine revolves around staple grains like millet and sorghum, which are often made into a porridge called "tô." Other common foods include maize, rice, yams, cassava, and various sauces made with okra, sorrel, and baobab leaves. Chicken and fish are common for dinner.

• Tô:

A thick porridge made from millet, maize, or sorghum flour, the national dish of Burkina Faso. It's typically served with a variety of sauces, including those made from okra, tomatoes, chili, and various leaves. 

• Fufu:

Soft, stretchy balls made from pounded starchy vegetables like cassava, yams, or plantains. 

• Riz Gras:

"Fatty rice," a hearty rice dish often served in urban areas, cooked with meat, vegetables, and a generous amount of oil. 

• Poulet Bicyclette (Bicycle Chicken):

A grilled chicken dish often sold by street vendors on bicycles. 

 

Other Dishes:

• Degue: A dessert made from steamed lumps of small millet, often eaten for breakfast, lunch, or as a snack. 

• Bâbenda: A one-pot dish of greens and grains, often cooked with fermented locust beans (soumbala) and dried or smoked fish. 

• Atieke: A type of steamed, fermented plantain or cassava dough, similar to Fufu. 

• Guinea fowl soup: A traditional soup featuring guinea fowl. 

• Groundnut soup: A soup made with peanuts. 

• Klaklo: A dish made from fonio, a type of grain, along with various vegetables and spices. 

• Broumassa: A dish made from fonio, a type of grain. 

• Meat kebab: Grilled meat, often mutton, goat, or beef. 

• Womi (Gualette): A type of pastry or cake. 

• Baabenda: A dish of greens and grains, often cooked with fermented locust beans. 

• Ragout d'Igname (Yam stew): A stew traditionally made with beef and yams, but can be made with other ingredients. 

 

Vegetables and Fruits:

• Vegetables like okra, sorrel, baobab leaves, and tomatoes are common ingredients in sauces and stews. 

• Bananas, mangoes, papayas, and coconuts are readily available fruits. 

• Burkina Faso is known for its local strawberries. 

 

Burkina Faso’s environment is currently in crisis. Climate change, compounded by desertification in the Sahel region, has deepened food insecurity. Meanwhile, white foreign corporations—particularly from whites from France, Canada, and the U.S.—continue to extract resources from the land without fair compensation to the people.

 

Gold, diamonds, and manganese have long been looted under the guise of “development.” Burkina Faso is Africa’s fourth-largest gold producer, yet remains one of the world’s poorest nations.

 

Why?
Because the profits flow outward—toward Swiss banks, Parisian vaults, and Wall Street portfolios—while local populations remain disenfranchised and abused. In the 2020s, ExxonMobil and other energy giants also showed interest in exploratory oil drilling in the region, stoking fears of another white front in the scramble for Africa.

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The Battle for Ivory and Ideas: Education in the Crosshairs

Burkina Faso’s educational system, like many post-colonial structures, still operates largely in French. Access to higher education is limited, with few universities and even fewer programs in African languages or African-centered epistemologies. 

 

Yet, the people resist. 

 

The University of Ouagadougou, now renamed Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo (after a prominent Burkinabè historian), remains a hub for intellectual resistance. Student movements continue to call for decolonized curricula and demand the inclusion of African perspectives in science, psychology, and history.

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Sacred Grounds: Archeology and the Erasure of Memory

The region is home to remarkable yet underexplored archaeological treasures—evidence of a rich precolonial past that contradicts the “primitive Africa” myth still peddled by white textbooks. Sites such as Loropéni, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are remnants of ancient trade networks that connected West Africa to the rest of the world, long before colonizers (whites) ever set foot on the continent.

Yet archaeological preservation receives little funding—except when it serves tourism or extractive purposes for white foreign governments and corporations. Much of Burkina Faso’s ancient art and artifacts remain locked away in European museums.

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Why the West Won’t Let Go

Why do the U.S., France, and other global powers continue to intervene—overtly or covertly—in Burkina Faso?

• Resources: From gold and diamonds to oil and rare earths, the soil of Burkina Faso is a modern El Dorado for the global elite.

• Geopolitical Positioning: Located in the Sahel, Burkina Faso is viewed as a key player in regional security, migration control, and counterterrorism narratives.

• Control of Ideology: The revival of Pan-Africanism and anti-imperial resistance threatens neoliberal economic interests and the continuation of mental colonialism.

 

As Thomas Sankara once said: “He who feeds you, controls you.” Burkina Faso is now choosing to feed itself.

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The Culture of Resistance: Music, Art, and Voice

Burkinabè artists, musicians, and thinkers have long carried the torch of liberation:

• Smockey (Serge Bambara) 

Rapper, activist, and co-founder of the grassroots movement Le Balai Citoyen (The Citizen’s Broom) that helped overthrow President Blaise Compaoré in 2014.

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• Kady Traoré – A rising filmmaker telling feminist and Pan-African stories from a Burkinabè perspective.  

• Sana Bob – Reggae artist blending traditional Mossi rhythms with messages of unity and social justice. 

These cultural warriors use their art to document struggle, inspire revolution, and affirm African dignity.

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Global Solidarity: Juneteenth Is African Too

Juneteenth reminds us that freedom delayed is not freedom denied. As Africans in the Americas, Caribbean Africans, and Black people across the Diaspora, our liberation is tied to that of our family in Africa. When we talk about Black freedom, we must not stop at the U.S. border.

• When Burkina Faso resists Western domination, we must pay attention.

• When Pan-African leaders are vilified or assassinated, we must investigate.

• When African people reclaim their history, land, and minds, we must celebrate.

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Reflections and Actions

• Reflection: What would it mean to center African nations in your Juneteenth celebration? To honor not only ancestors from 1865 and our ancient ancestors from around the globe, but those in Ouagadougou resisting today?

• Action: Host a Juneteenth teach-in on Burkina Faso and president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré.  Share the works of Thomas Sankara. Donate to African-led education and climate justice initiatives.

• Resource: “Thomas Sankara Speaks” – a compilation of speeches available through Pathfinder Press.

 

“The revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.” — Fidel Castro, echoed by Sankara

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Resource Spotlight
📚 “Africa Must Unite” by Kwame Nkrumah
🎧 Listen to Smockey’s album Pre’volution
🎨 View the art of Issa Sanou at Burkina Faso’s Laongo Sculpture Symposium