Burkina Faso

In Burkina Faso the average amount of schooling is just over one year and close to 50 percent of Burkina Faso’s population is living on less than US$1.25 a day. About 90 percent of Burkina Faso’s 18 million inhabitants are engaged in subsistence agriculture, but many lack access to modern farming techniques. Droughts, increasing desertification and other affects of climate change have severely impacted agricultural activities and the economy.

This land-locked country is located in Western Africa, bordered by Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali and receives on average just 31 inches of rain annually.

Our Work in Burkina Faso

In Africa, The Hunger Project works to build sustainable community-based programs using the Epicentre Strategy. An epicentre is a dynamic centre of community mobilisation and action, as well as an actual facility built by community members. Through the Epicentre Strategy, 15,000-25,000 people are brought together as a cluster of rural villages, giving villages more clout with local government than a single village is likely to have while also increasing a community’s ability to collectively utilise resources. The epicentre building serves as a focal point where the motivation, energies and leadership of the people converge with the resources of local government and non-governmental organisations. Over an eight-year period, an epicentre addresses hunger and poverty and moves along a path toward sustainable self-reliance, at which point it is able to fund its own activities and no longer requires financial investment from The Hunger Project.

The Hunger Project–Burkina Faso is comprised of 15 epicentres. Together these epicentres serve a population of about 303,893 people in 189 villages.

The Hunger Project has been working in Burkina Faso since 1997 and is currently empowering community partners in 15 epicentre areas to end their own hunger and poverty. Through its integrated approach to rural development, the Epicentre Strategy, The Hunger Project is working with community partners to successfully access the basic services needed to lead lives of self-reliance and achieve internationally agreed upon markers of success, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Check out satellite views of our epicentre sites in Burkina Faso. See them here: