Burkina Faso Country Info - Africa

Description and Basic Information

Burkina Faso with its capital Ouagadougou is located in Africa (Western Africa, north of Ghana). It covers some 274,201 square kilometres (slightly larger than Colorado) with 14,761,000 citizens. French is the language spoken by the majority in Burkina Faso. Niger, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo and Mali are bordering countries.

Burkina Faso is one of the safest and friendliest countries in all of Africa. Although it receives only a small number of tourists per year, it is an excellent destination for anyone interested in seeing beautiful West African country and exploring African culture and music. You should always take precautions when traveling, but Burkina is a remarkably safe and respectful country. Women travelers rarely experience any problems. Greeting is a very important part of Burkinabé culture, it is virtually a slap in the face to ignore someone that has greeted you, or to not greet at all so it is a good idea to greet everyone you pass by.

Pictures from Capital (Ouagadougou)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Burkina Faso

The terrain offers mostly flat to dissected, undulating plains having hills in west and southeast. The average density of population is about 53 per km². The climate in Burkina Faso can be described as tropical with warm, dry winters, hot, wet summers. Possible natural disasters include recurring droughts.

To reach someone in Burkina Faso dial +226 prior to a number. There are 167,000 installed telephones. And there are 3,299,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".bf". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz. The following list are the 13 regions/states in Burkina Faso we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Burkinabe population grew at a rate of 3.1% (or by 502,846 citizens). With 211,468 deaths and 714,315 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 3.1%. 0 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Burkina Faso: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.