The state of health of the Burkinabé is generally poor. Most hospitals are in the larger towns, but the government has improved access to primary health care by increasing the number of village clinics. Main causes of death in Burkina Faso include lower respiratory diseases, malaria, and diarrheal diseases. Other diseases in the country include onchocerciasis, sleeping sickness, leprosy, yellow fever, and schistosomiasis. Periodic droughts have contributed to malnutrition and related diseases, especially among young children and pregnant women. Burkina Faso has a lower prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS than do many other African countries, although it is higher than the world average. The government has focused on prevention and treatment of AIDS with some success, and the prevalence rate has decreased since the beginning of the 21st century.

Education

School enrollment is one of the lowest in Africa, even though the government devotes a large portion of the national budget to education. French is the language of instruction in primary and secondary schools. About one-fourth of the population aged 15 and older is literate. The primary institution for higher education is Ouagadougou University (established 1974). Research institutes in Ouagadougou offer degrees in rural engineering and hydrology. There are a polytechnic university and a college for rural development in Bobo Dioulasso. A university was established in Koudougou in 2005. Some Burkinabé seek higher education in France, Senegal, or Côte d’Ivoire.

Early history

Axes belonging to a Neolithic culture have been found in the north of Burkina Faso. The Bobo, the Lobi, and the Gurunsi are the earliest known inhabitants of the country. About the 15th century ce, conquering horsemen invaded the region from the south and founded the Gurma and Mossi kingdoms, in the eastern and central areas, respectively. Several Mossi kingdoms developed, the most powerful of which was that of Ouagadougou, located in the centre of the country. Headed by an emperor, the morho naba (“great lord”), the Ouagadougou Mossi state defeated attempted invasions by the Songhai and Fulani empires yet maintained valuable commercial links with major western African trading powers, including the Dyula, the Hausa, and the Asante.

European exploration and colonization

The German explorer Gottlob Adolf Krause traversed the Mossi country in 1886, and the French army officer Louis-Gustave Binger visited the morho naba in 1888. France obtained a protectorate over the Yatenga empire in 1895, and the French officers Paul Voulet and Charles Paul Louis Chanoine (also known as Julien Chanoine) defeated the morho naba Boukari-Koutou (Wobogo) of Mossi in 1896 and then proceeded to overrun the Gurunsi lands. The Gurma accepted a French protectorate in 1897, and in that same year the lands of the Bobo and of the Lobi were annexed by the French (though the Lobi, armed with poisoned arrows, were not effectively subdued until 1903). An Anglo-French convention of 1898 fixed the frontier between France’s new acquisitions and the northern territories of the Gold Coast.

The French divided the country into administrative cercles (“circles”) but maintained the chiefs, including the morho naba, in their traditional seats. The country at first was attached to Upper Senegal–Niger (as that colony was called from 1904 to 1920; now Mali) but was organized as a separate colony, Upper Volta (Haute-Volta), in 1919. In 1932 it was partitioned between Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and French Sudan. In 1947, however, Upper Volta was reestablished to become an overseas territory of the French Union, with a territorial assembly of its own. The assembly in 1957 received the right to elect an executive council of government for the territory, which at the end of 1958 was transformed into an autonomous republic within the French Community. When independence was proclaimed on August 5, 1960, the new constitution provided for an executive president elected by universal adult suffrage for a five-year term and an elected Legislative Assembly.