Aid

Burkina received $370 million in 1997 mainly from the EU, however this was down 11% on the previous year and the large number of NGO's working in the country makes any organisation of aid difficult.

Some government directed aid is arguably misspent on more prestigious projects. In one instance, $50 million was used to provide six air-conditioned bungalows and conference facilities for visiting dignitaries and project supervisors in a self contained compound with its own generator, street lighting, surfaced roads and vehicles.

However this is not the only example of miss-allocated funds, many NGO's do not ask the local people what they need or what would be appropriate but decide for them what money will be spent on. As a result a solar powered water pump lies idle in a village, as the 1p charge to use it is too much for the locals, however this money is needed to maintain the pump machinery.

An example of an NGO run by and for local people is ASAP (L'Association de Soutien a l'Auto-Promotion- The Association for the Promotion of Self Help) started in 1995 by locals from Gnagna province in Eastern Burkina Faso. ASAP's offices are in Piela; a small village 240km east of Ouagadougou and it aims to work with all sectors of rural society and is currently involved in ten isolated villages that receive little or no support from other agencies. ASAP works mainly in the areas of primary education, disability support, female empowerment and health education. They work closely with Funiba, a local theatre company producing health education films in the local languages to show the largely illiterate population in the evenings using a generator, TV and video. The films are followed by questions and discussion and are shown in the evenings as they are easier to see in the dark and more people are available to come and watch. Women's groups have been set up to allow women to ask questions without embarrassment on a variety of topics-farming, literacy, health and child care and also contraception, Aids and female circumcision.

Village meeting under the trees to talk about the latest
plans to help the village through ASAP.

ASAP has also set up women's literacy classes, workshops for disabled people to start their own businesses, health care classes, tree nurseries and gardens in the primary schools, programmes to encourage school attendance especially of girls, school and village latrines, water pumps, agricultural and soil conservation advice and many initiatives specific to the needs of particular villages.

In the village of Tobue, the floors in the school had started to break up and sheep and goats were coming in the classrooms at night, as the door locks were broken. The walls needed painting.

Before and after the teachers, pupils and parents had worked together to fetch the sand and gravel and mixed the cement and laid new floors and painted the walls.

New locks were fitted.

And the pupils liked their “new” classroom

The pump was also repaired.

The director is from Piela and his wife is the local midwife, they teach by example and are well respected as they have returned to live and work with their people.

At the third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, the following Programme of Action:2001-2002 was drawn up.

Development objectives and national priorities.

There are seven major objectives:

(i) to create conditions in which every person from Burkina Faso can feel safe;

(ii) to speed up development of the production potential yet preserve the environment;

(iii) to step up action to reduce poverty and improve social services;

(iv) to maintain macroeconomic stability and consolidate gains in competitiveness;

(v) to modernize the civil service, with the emphasis on making it more efficient;

(vi) to strengthen the process of decentralization; and

(vii) to consolidate the process of economic integration.