Burkina Faso

Abstract

Burkina Faso has been reeling under multiple socioeconomic and political turbulences prior to 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. Similarly, structural inequalities based on gender and location determined the intensity of Covid-19 impacts on the population. The chapter analysed Burkina Faso’s pandemic responses within these contexts and growing distrust of the state. Drawing from secondary data sets and literature and framed within a feminist intersectional analytical framework, we highlighted that while several mitigation measures were instituted, the poor Burkinabe, mainly women, people in rural areas and the urban poor, had the worse experience of Covid-19. Again, while the state instituted measures to improve public trust in governance and management of the pandemic, there were pushbacks by citizens, forcing the state to reconsider some of its measures.

Introduction

The first cases of Covid-19 infections were confirmed in Burkina Faso on 9 March 2020, amidst complex socioeconomic and political perturbations. Burkina Faso’s social and political context has been particularly marked by instability since 2011. A significant factor producing instability was the fall of Blaise Compaoré’s regime in October 2014, compounded by a security and humanitarian crisis that began in 2015 and clashes between ethnic groups. The Burkinabe state, particularly its army, has been weakened considerably at the state level by these crises, encouraging the emergence of multiple groups exercising violence. Among these are ethnic self-defence militias known as “Kolgowéogo”, Islamist armed groups claiming to be jihad, and groups of brigands (Kane, 2019). The 2019 report from the Legatum Institute, which analyses a country’s potential to move from poverty to prosperity in an inclusive manner, gave Burkina Faso scores of 63.14% for safety and security, 60.68% for individual freedom and 44.12% for governance. These different scores placed Burkina Faso 117th, 58th and 108th, respectively compared to other countries.

Regarding corruption, Burkina Faso was ranked 85th out of 180 countries in 2019 by Transparency International, scoring 40%. Twenty-eight per cent of the Burkinabè population believed that corruption had increased in 2019 and 16% of the users of public services reported paying a bribe in 2019. In addition, Amnesty International (2019) states that human rights violations have increased in Burkina Faso. The country amended its Penal Code in June 2019 by adopting Law No. 044–2019/AN. This law defines what constitutes offences, but critics consider the definitions excessively broad and note that they could be used to repress human rights defenders, journalists and bloggers and restrict access to information.

The pandemic has thus added further strain to the country's resources, with two-fifths of the population (40%) living in poverty. Burkina Faso is classified as a lower-income country with an HDI of 0.434, according to the 2018 Human Development Report (UNDP, 2019). The value of the Gini Index was 35.3% in 2014¹ Furthermore, in 2018, the country’s real GDP was 5,264.9 billion CFA francs [8.03 billion euros, much of which derived from the services sector (46%), despite this sector comprising only 17.7% of the working population (MINEFID, 2019). The relative contribution of other sectors to the GDP amounted to 21% for the industry sector, 20% for agriculture and 13% for tax revenues. Poverty affects around two-fifths of the Burkinabe population, or 40.1%, according to the latest household surveys (INSD, 2015a). It is higher in rural areas (47.5%) than in urban areas (13.7%). Only 25.5% of households had access to electricity in 2014, 9.3% in rural areas and 62.4% in urban areas (INSD, 2015b).

In terms of employment, while 63.4% of the population was actively employed in 2014, women's employment rate was lower (54.6.%) than that of men (73.3%)(INSD, 2015c. Significantly, 84% of the jobs are precarious. In 2018, the industry sector created the most employment (31.1%), followed by agriculture (29.9%), trade (21.3%) and services (17.7%).

Access to basic education has improved in Burkina Faso to the point of being almost universal, including in rural areas. For primary school (grade1-6), the gross admission rate was 104.8% in the 2017–2018 school year (INSD, 2019a). The enrolment rate was around 90.7%, with perfect parity between girls and boys, i.e. 90.9% and 90.6%, respectively. However, gender and locational inequalities increase as one progresses through the school system. For example, in 2015–16, there were 513 students in tertiary education per 100,000 inhabitants and disaggregation of the data revealed that only 330 students were female (Wayack-Pambè, 2020).

Burkina Faso’s health indicators relating to access to the public health system show that in 2018 health centres had an average action radius of 5.9 km, a distance that tends towards the international standard of less than 5 km (Ministère de la santé, 2019). The average population within a Centre for Health and Social Promotion’s (CSPS) catchment area was 9645 persons. Coverage for health professionals within the public health system was one doctor per 12,000 inhabitants despite the international standards recommending one doctor per 10,000 inhabitants; one nurse per 2419 inhabitants against standards recommending one nurse per 3000 inhabitants, and one midwife per 5510 inhabitants compared with standards recommending one midwife per 5000 inhabitants.

Maternal and infant mortality indicators remain high. In 2018, the maternal mortality rate was 320 deaths per 100,000 women, and the child mortality rate was 94 deaths per 1000 live births. The analysis of infant mortality rates according to children's place of residence shows that in 2010 infant mortality was lower in urban areas (46 pro mille) than in rural areas (82 pro mille). Children living in the poorest households were the most affected (95 pro mille) by mortality compared to those living in the wealthiest households (45 pro mille) (Ministère de l’économie et des finances, 2012). HIV-AIDS prevalence rate changed from 1% in 2010 (EDS-BF 2010) to 0.80% in 2018 (Présidence du Faso, 2019). Severe malaria remains the leading cause of death in medical centres and hospitals. In 2015, malaria accounted for 23.9% of the causes of death, followed by severe acute malnutrition (6.2%) and infections in newborn babies (5.2%) (Ministère de la santé, 2017).

The rate of access to drinking water in Burkina Faso was 75.4% in 2019, with disparities between rural (68.4%) areas and urban areas (92.9%) (Ministère de l'eau et de l'assainissement, 2020). However, it should be noted that in the Burkinabè context, the mere availability of a water source is insufficient to give an idea of the population’s actual access to water. Access to water sources must be coupled with service quality criteria that consider the flow and continuity of supply. Discontinuity of service increases the risk of pathogen contamination of the water, as well as the difficulty of collecting water. Women and children usually carry out this chore, and the consequences of poor access to water (including time consumption) severely limit women's economic empowerment (Dos Santos and Wayack-Pambè, 2016).

In terms of sanitation, the proportion of households with improved toilets (VIP latrine, EcoSan, manual flush toilet, mechanical flush toilet) remained very low, with only 8.1% of the population having improved toilets in 2014 to 4.7% in 2009. In 2016, 40.4% of households had access to electricity,² 27.7% in rural areas and 75.3% in urban areas. Only 9.2% of female-headed households had access to electricity compared to 42.6% of male-headed households (MINEFID, 2017). Indicators on access to ICT show significant differences by gender and area of residence. A survey of access to ICTs among the population aged 15 years or older indicated that in 2014, 64.3% of Burkinabè owned a mobile phone, of which 51.7% were women and 79.4% men (INSD-EMC-TICs, 2015). The proportions according to the place of residence were 87% of the urban population had a mobile phone compared to 55.8% of the rural population.

Burkinabè societies are generally marked by unequal gender relations that expect women to be submissive to men. This is reflected in women's possibilities for exercising agency, i.e. having the power to decide for themselves. For example, in 2010, only 20% of women reported being able to make informed decisions for themselves regarding sexual relations, contraceptive use and reproductive health care (Ministère de l'économie et des Finances, 2012). Similarly, only 12% of women reported having participated in all three types of important decisions in their household at the same time: those related to their health, those related to major household purchases and those related to family visits. In addition, the proportion of women who had experienced domestic violence in the year preceding the survey was 9.3% in 2010, according to the same report.

The chapter analyses the inclusiveness of the public health strategies adopted and the measures taken to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in Burkina Faso. More specifically, it examines whether and how the different stakeholders were involved in defining and implementing the proposed responses and the multidimensional aspects of the consequences of these responses on the different groups of vulnerable populations. The study adopted an intersectional feminist approach allowing us, beyond gender, to take into account various groups of marginalised populations, such as the elderly, people living with a disability, street children, rural populations, the prison population or socio-economically disadvantaged populations through a feminist intersectional theoretical lens.

Methodology

The analysis is based on a Covid-19-focused review of the online press, government policy documents and reports published online by state and non-state actors. Several documentary sources were mobilised for the analyses presented in this study. These include existing national programme and policy documents, activity reports or study reports produced by ministries, documents and reports produced by the government, associations or other civil society actors reporting on actions taken on the pandemic, web pages of national and international institutions and online press articles. The information gathered from programme and policy documents, reports and institutional websites was used firstly to present an overview of the political, economic and social context in which Burkina Faso found itself at the time of the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic on its territory. They also served to clarify the existing mechanisms for caring for vulnerable population groups and their potential for inclusion.

The data used to analyse the management of the pandemic derived mainly from the online private news outlets and a government information site. For the national press, the vast majority of the articles were identified on the site lefaso.net, the leading online news organ in Burkina Faso, and on Burkina24. Lefaso.net is a popular site serving as a relay for information from the various sectors of the country's political, social and economic life. It publishes articles written by academics, activists and other members of civil society residing in Burkina Faso or outside the country. Lefaso.net provides regular reports on the activities of the state, NGO associations, universities and educational centres. The Information Service of the Government of Burkina Faso (SIG) publishes press releases and reports on government action.

The information was collected from 9 March, the start date of the pandemic, to 30 September 2020. The research was carried out on the lefaso.net site and the GIS, in the files that each of these sites devoted to the Covid-19 pandemic, compiling all the information held by the site on the subject. For the other sites, the search was carried out on their search engines using the word “covid”. A first selection was made by selecting any article or document containing Covid-19 in the title. A second selection was made by reading the first few lines, which made it possible to either classify the document in one of the predefined headings according to the search questions or to eliminate it based on keywords. A total of 859 articles from the lefaso.net site and 285 articles from the GIS were selected for content analysis. Finally, some information was supplemented by articles from the international online press dealing with the same subject or allowing for a more in-depth analysis.

Situating Covid-19 in Burkina Faso’s Security Crisis

A recent report published the 13 March 2020 by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicates that 5.3 million people are affected by the security crisis in Burkina Faso and that 2.2 million need humanitarian aid assistance. Table 3.1 summarises the needs of those estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance, as well as the type of need. Of the 579,000 people identified as in need, the majority are women (52%) or children (59%). There is also a substantial proportion of people with disabilities (1.2%). The assistance and protections needed include shelter and essential household items (EHI), education and food security. Concerning the latter, the nutritional situation of the population, already fragile due to the chronic drought and climatic hazards, is also exacerbated by the current humanitarian crisis. It is estimated that 954,000 people need nutritional assistance.

Table 3.1 Assistance and protection needs in the population most affected by the security crisis

Covid-19 Responses in Burkina Faso

On 9 March 2020, Burkina Faso confirmed its first cases of Covid-19, with the number of daily cases fluctuating between 0 and 50 cases per day between March and September 2020 and a peak of 193 on 12 September 2020, which is explained by a massive screening of students from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in military training in Bobo Dioulasso (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1

Source Data on Covid-19 in Burkina Faso (INSD, 2020)

Trends in confirmed cases and deaths related to Covid-19 in Burkina Faso (9 March–30 September 2020).

Available statistics on the Covid-19 pandemic in Burkina Faso, therefore, indicate very low levels of pandemic-related lethality and mortality compared to other countries or regions of the world. However, extensive responses to the Covid-19 pandemic were taken in Burkina Faso. In the early stages of the outbreak, these responses were primarily aimed at curbing the spread of the disease and mitigating measures’ impact on the population's living conditions. These responses focused on four aspects. The first two, health measures and those specific to the education sector, were primarily aimed at preventing the spread of the epidemic in the country. These were complemented by measures to mitigate the socioeconomic consequences of the proposed responses, as well as actions to ensure trust and reassurance of good governance of the pandemic by the government. Almost all of the measures were government-initiated but with diversified sources of funding.

Health Sector Measures

One of the initial health measures taken to manage the Covid-19 outbreak when the first cases appeared in Burkina Faso in March 2020 was the requisitioning of a hospital centre (in Tengandogo, a suburb of Ouagadougou) to receive and care for Covid-19 patients only. Screening units and tracing of contact cases were also set up. The dissemination of awareness-raising messages accompanied these measures on preventive measures through the media and a tour by the Minister of Health to raise awareness of the disease.³ In May, they were supplemented by a digital system for monitoring and detecting cases suspected of having contracted Covid-19 with support from the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and Terre des Hommes (TdH). Measures with a narrower remit included training of health sector actors in communication and community engagement to disseminate knowledge about the risks associated with the disease. In line with scientific developments at the international level, two clinical trials were initiated by the Ministry of Scientific Research, one on chloroquine and the other on a plant-based drug, Apirivine.⁴

Public Health Responses

During his first message to the nation on the Covid-19 pandemic, President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré announced several movement-related restrictions. He announced a ban on gatherings of more than fifty people, and imposition of curfew hour from 5 am to 7 pm throughout the country, starting from 21 March 2020.⁵ The local authorities in affected cities subsequently issued by-laws ordering the closure of establishments likely to gather large numbers of people, such as markets, restaurants and entertainment venues, and later, places of worship.⁶ The government also decreed the closure of all schools throughout the country in a communiqué dated 14 March.⁷ The number of people permitted at family celebrations (weddings, funerals, etc.) was restricted to forty, with a procession ban. Visits to patients in hospitals and to prisoners were also banned⁸ and a thousand prisoners had their sentences commuted.⁹ Large-scale administrative operations such as voter registration¹⁰ and issuing of national identity cards were also interrupted.¹¹

The second type of measure to contain the epidemic involved the reduction of the daily and spatial mobility of individuals. This materialised through the closure of all land and air borders, and the introduction of a night curfew¹² in cities affected by the pandemic.¹³ These cities were quarantined and the movement of people to other locations was strictly forbidden.¹⁴ Police controls were introduced at the exit points of the cities. Finally, all spaces and structures open to the public were required to implement a protocol of measures to prevent the spread of the virus, essentially providing hand-washing facilities and hydroalcoholic gel to users, and making compulsory the wearing of face masks within the premises.¹⁵ The latter measure was made compulsory in all public places at the end of April 2020.¹⁶

One month after school closures, the Ministry of National Education, Literacy and Promotion of National Languages (MENAPLN) presented a response plan for educational continuity in the context of the pandemic, which included e-learning resources, promotion of hygiene in schools and sensitisation of learners and teachers among others.

Responses to Mitigate the Economic Impacts of the Pandemic

The government was faced with the question of how to mitigate the impact of the measures taken to contain the spread of Covid-19 on the population as soon as they were implemented. Questions were also raised by civil society as to the need for these nationwide measures given the realities of the country, particularly regarding measures that had an impact on the population’s income. As a result, the government announced a series of measures to mitigate the consequences two weeks after issuing decrees that limited the mobility and activities of the population.

The mitigation measures mainly concerned actors in the economic sector, people working in markets and categories of people identified as vulnerable. Concerning economic sector actors, a battery of fiscal measures were taken in their favour, consisting of a waiver by the state of the collection of various taxes, deferral or exemption from payment and suspension or remission of penalties, to secure the country's supply of consumer goods and pharmaceutical products. In compensation, after consultation with traders, the Ministry of Trade secured stocks of consumer goods¹⁷ (sugar, milk, rice, oil, soap, etc.) to guarantee the availability of stocks and reinforce the mechanisms for combating clandestine storage and price controls throughout the country.¹⁸ Moreover, the government took over the operating costs of the traders working in markets. The latter has thus benefited from a suspension of rents and fees and an exemption from security fees.

The rest of the population enjoyed means-based subsidies aimed to ensure access to basic services, such as water and electricity.¹⁹ For the poorest households, a three-month exemption from payment of water and electricity bills was introduced, while other households benefited from a 50% rebate on electricity. Free water supply was introduced at standpipes in cities,²⁰ prompting the Ministry of Water and Sanitation to declare during a meeting with the media that the rural population had not been forgotten. However, according to the Ministry, the modalities for implementing mitigation measures for water supply in rural areas within the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic were under consideration. The location-specific management of rural water supply made the operationalisation of responses complex.²¹

Food was distributed to vulnerable populations—female heads of households, people living with disability and elderly people—in all the communes of Ouagadougou and the surrounding rural communes by the Ministry in charge of social action. These operations were to mark the beginning of a phase of support for vulnerable people through food distribution in the thirteen Burkina Faso regions.²² Cash transfers of 20,000 CFA francs [30 euros] per month for three months were sent directly to 43,000 people affected by Covid-19 and identified through the Burkina-Naong-Sa Ya social safety nets programme.²³

Finally, as a gesture of national solidarity, the government took other symbolic measures, such as the renunciation of salaries of members of the government: six months for the President of the Republic, four months for the Prime Minister, two months for ministers of state and one month for other members of the government to contribute to the financing of Covid-19 prevention and mitigation measures.²⁴

Innovations Arising from the Pandemic and Involvement of the Scientific Community

Scientific research in Burkina Faso, whether academic or industrial, is typically allocated very few financial resources. In the context of Covid-19, some studies were initiated by Burkinabè researchers. A study funded by the World Bank delivered its results on the impact of Covid-19 in artisanal mining communities in July 2020.²⁵ The aim was to examine how Covid-19 related restrictions affect children's and their families economic and social lives. In September 2020, the National Institute of Public Health presented a multidisciplinary research project on Covid-19 involving Burkinabè, French and Canadian researchers.²⁶ This project aims to generate epidemiological and socio-anthropological knowledge to assist the country in responding to the pandemic. Technological initiatives to help improve the management of the pandemic in the health system have also been developed. These include Mondjossi, a platform for connecting users with the medical profession,²⁷ ePresc (https://epresc.care/) is a web/mobile application dedicated to the digital management of patient's medical information throughout their lives and throughout their care,²⁸ Moreover, DMS is a pharmacy management software that facilitates data traceability.²⁹ Other innovations included a proposal for constructing a prefabricated hospital, a pedal-powered hand-washing system and software for distance learning (easyschool).

Inclusiveness of Strategies and Policy Responses: An Analysis

In Burkina Faso, as in the rest of the world, Covid-19 mortality is higher among men than women (Wayack-Pambè, Lankoandé & Kouanda, 2020). However, numerous studies show that poor and female populations are the most negatively impacted by epidemics, particularly regarding the social consequences and responses to them. The consideration of these populations has not been explicitly expressed or anticipated in the Covid-19 response documents developed by the government of Burkina Faso. As a result, an inclusive dimension is almost totally absent in the strategies and responses to mitigate the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The inclusiveness of the government's strategies and responses to Covid-19 can only be seen in specific measures aimed at limiting the immediate socioeconomic effects of the preventive responses to the pandemic. The specific needs of populations traditionally discriminated against, for example, in terms of schooling, were not taken into account in the MENAPLN response plan. Hence the measures proposed for educational continuity were likely to increase educational inequalities. However, while the government’s overall pandemic response plan did not initially target specific vulnerable groups, it was adapted over time in response to feedback from the population, opposition political parties, civil society organisations and donations from various contributors.

The temporary closure of schools will likely lead the most vulnerable children to drop out of school or not be enrolled. Given the conditions prior to the onset of the pandemic, it is conceivable that the solutions issued by the MENAPLN to limit the consequences of school closures were unable to curb the increase in pre-existing educational disparities between the advantaged and disadvantaged population groups, i.e. between urban and rural areas, between wealthy and poor households and between male and female children. Firstly, concerning children living in rural areas and those living in economically disadvantaged households, the virtual absence of electricity supply in rural areas, and to a lesser extent in peripheral urban areas, has de facto excluded children in these areas from the educational continuity offered by MENAPLN. As for the teaching offered by radio, even if the experiments on a small scale indicate that it is a medium that favours distance learning, it would have been necessary for every Burkinabe child attending school to have a personal radio to follow the lessons. Moreover, the proportion of the population with a computer or mobile phone and the proportion with access to the internet suggest that only a tiny minority of children have been able to access online teaching resources.

For girls, gender relations in society that assign them to caregiving roles increase the educational inequalities generated by school closures (Bandiera et al., 2020; Burzynska & Contreras, 2020). School closure thus has long-term deleterious effects on girls. Once out of school, they are more likely to stay out. School closures increase in this practice in contexts where early marriage is widespread. In Burkina Faso, for example, an increase in early marriage is feared due to the Covid-19 school closures. Indeed, 51.3% of the female population aged 20–24 declared in 2014 that they had married before 18, compared to 1.6% of the young men in the same age group (INSD, 2019b). Burkina Faso is thus among the countries in the world where the prevalence of early marriage is high. These rates are even higher in rural areas, where 62.9% of young women had married before the age of 18 compared to 2.2% of young men. In urban areas, 19.9% of women were in this situation, and no men were affected. Prevalence levels of early marriage were also high in the East and the Sahel regions, where the median age at marriage for girls was 16. These regions were already experiencing school closures due to attacks by armed groups. In 2015, nearly seven out of ten girls (65.2%) aged 20–24 years reported having been married before 18 in the Eastern region, whereas the phenomenon was almost non-existent among young men. In the Sahel region, eight out of ten girls (76.6%) in the same age group reported the same situation, compared to only one out of ten boys (10.4%) in the same age group.³⁰

Another consequence of school closures is increasing the demand for girls for domestic and reproductive work. As a result, they have to substitute for adult women in tasks and activities related to this area. Girls are thus more unable than boys to become involved in a pedagogical continuity at a distance.

While the state’s assumption of financial responsibility for water and electricity bills as part of a desire to minimise the economic inequalities generated by the pandemic, it did not take into account the specific needs of women and the accentuation of unequal situations between men and women generated by the pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic appeared in Burkina Faso during the dry season, when water is scarce, including in standpipes—moreover, introducing free water only concerned women in urban areas, while women in rural areas get their water mainly from rivers, wells or boreholes. However, even in urban areas, where water collection remains a predominantly female chore (Dos Santos & Wayack Pambè, 2016), this measure has not been inclusive, as it has not reduced the drudgery of waiting at the water point. This is all the more so as March, April and May are the hottest months and those with very low flows in the standpipes.

One of the significant shortcomings of the Covid-19 response plan,³¹ as well as the strategies and measures put in place to deal with the pandemic is that they incorporate very little of the social dimensions of the security situation related to Jihadist insurgents. Thus the response plan does not consider the prolonged closure of various administrative services, schools and health centres in the regions most affected by the crisis or the displacement of people caused by the crisis.

Finally, the increase in domestic violence was very quickly identified as a “pandemic within the pandemic” because it affects all countries affected by Covid-19. This violence, which mainly affects women and girls, was denounced by the UN Secretary-General, who called on all states to take appropriate measures to end it. Nevertheless, the issue of gender-based violence has not been raised in Burkina Faso in any governmental or social forum. Therefore, it is difficult to know whether this is due to a lack of manifestation of the phenomenon in the Burkinabè context or whether it has simply been forgotten. Nevertheless, it should be noted that domestic or child abuse rates are low in Burkina Faso (Ministry of Economy and Finance, 2012; ISSP, 2018; Wayack Pambè et al., 2014).

It is difficult to determine the origin of the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in Burkina Faso. However, the measures taken by the government can be read in the light of the social, political and economic situation prior to the pandemic, as well as the debates and developments at the regional and international levels.

Regarding the social, political and economic climate at a domestic level, the first measures were perceived by certain sections of the population as a willingness on the part of the government to take advantage of the health crisis to tackle internal difficulties. Thus, the closure of schools from 16 to 31 March and a ban on gatherings of more than fifty people were decreed on 14 March 2020, just two days before a protest march and the start of strike action among primary and secondary school teachers. In addition, a strike call for 16–20 March 2020³² was issued by the Union of Trade Union Action (UAS) against the application of the Single Tax on Salaries and Wages (IUTS) to the bonuses and allowances of public employees. The closure of educational institutions during the weekend on a Saturday evening, with immediate effect on the following Monday, was therefore interpreted as a means of silencing the social movements being prepared in the country. This suspicion was reinforced by the fact that the government vacillated a great deal before closing places of worship and markets. Nevertheless, here, too, the government was accused of being afraid that it would have to confront specific religious and traditional communities resisting the preventive measure.

The temporal nature of decisions also led people to question the independence of the government in decision-making, as well as the legitimacy of the measures taken and their appropriateness to the country’s situation. The decisions announced by the government were thus often welcomed and perceived as “following in the footsteps” of what was done in developed countries, particularly in France, without taking into account national realities. Indeed, the closure of schools was decreed on 14 March, two days after the same measure was decided in France. Similarly, the introduction of measures to limit the mobility of individuals, taken on 20 March, took place four days after confinement was imposed throughout France.

The desire to set up clinical trials³³ on Chloroquine and Apivirine (a remedy derived from local plants) stemmed both from the desire to position oneself internationally in the debate on the effect of chloroquine, and from the desire of African countries to contribute to the fight against the pandemic. Furthermore, a proven effect of chloroquine or Apirivine would have provided African states with a low-cost treatment for the disease. However, the official launch of these clinical trials by the Ministry of Research has been followed by slow implementation. In the case of Apivirine, the first protocol was rejected by the Health Research Ethics Committee (HREC).³⁴ It was only in December 2020 that the first results of Apivirine were delivered, prompting challenges from some researchers and medical practitioners.³⁵

Governance, Power Relations and Contestations of Covid-19 Responses

As a result of the various corruption cases involving the political elite that have been reported in the press for more than a decade, civil society and the population, in general, show a lack of confidence in the government’s management of public assets. This situation has prompted the government to communicate very early on the management of the pandemic in an effort to be transparent and to give an image of good governance. Nevertheless, all the initiatives taken by the government remained marred by suspicion among the population. Some of the public image restoring programmes include daily Covid-19 briefings which were reduced gradually to weekly and monthly updates. The national Covid-19 coordinator Prof. Martial Ouédraogo was sacked after the poor handling of the death of the first patient. Covid-19 updates were broadcast on various media outlets in the country.

The government also held stakeholder consultations with political parties, market women and transport associations to improve the management of the pandemic. To resume economic activities, consultations were held with the actors of the various economic sectors, in particular, the urban passenger transport sector and the interurban, peri-urban and rural passenger transport sectors. These meetings led to the signing of protocols of an agreement to organise the resumption of activities in these sectors.³⁶ After the closure of the Ouagadougou central market, Rood-Wooko, the medium and small markets and the itinerant markets also closed on 26 March 2020.³⁷ At the insistence of the population, the Ouagadougou city council initiated consultation with actors of the informal economy and the associations of market traders on 1 April 2020.³⁸ The consultation aimed to propose ways and means of reopening commercial infrastructures in the capital. These exchanges led to the establishment of a memorandum of understanding between the two parties for the strict observance of preventive measures to curb the pandemic and subsequently to the reopening of the prominent market in Ouagadougou on 20 April 2020.³⁹ However, a few days after the reopening of the market, the clauses of the protocol relating to the preventive measures were not respected.⁴⁰

At the same time, a national committee for the crisis management of the pandemic was created, made up of government representatives, technical and financial partners working in the health sector, representatives of private health structures and civil society.⁴¹ The High Council for Social Dialogue also initiated a framework bringing together members of the government, employers and workers to encourage joint reflection on the socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic and the development of palliative measures acceptable to the population.⁴²

The various initiatives undertaken by the public authorities to demonstrate their good management of the pandemic have not always succeeded in restoring a climate of trust between the government and the population. One of the reasons for this is probably the fact that very few Burkinabès have been infected with Covid-19, and the pandemic’s health effects were imperceptible to most of the population. The confusion surrounding the management of the first Covid-19 death in Burkina Faso (also the first recorded death of Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa) sowed doubt about the natural causes of this death⁴³and contributed to the scepticism among ordinary people regarding the existence of the disease. Moreover, the first people to be affected, and whose contamination was widely publicised, were members of the government⁴⁴ and people from wealthy social classes. The measures implemented were therefore felt to subject most of the population to resolving a problem that only affected the elite. Meanwhile, the consequences of these measures affected the majority but not the elite. Despite the authorities’ attempts to establish participation in the politics surrounding Covid-19 management through consultations with actors in the informal sector, the popular demonstrations by market traders forced the authorities to reopen earlier than planned.⁴⁵

Similarly, mass demonstrations by members of an association of Muslim practitioners demanding the reopening of mosques⁴⁶ forced the government to authorise the immediate reopening of places of worship for all other religious denominations.⁴⁷ On the strength of this victory, the population subsequently demonstrated to demand the lifting of the curfew,⁴⁸ leading the government to capitulate again, thus removing any pretence of consensus in Covid-19 politics.

As is becoming increasingly clear, the management of the pandemic in Burkina Faso took place in a context of permanent contestation of public authority as well as under pressure from civil society, opposition political parties and various professional bodies to encourage the government to take appropriate measures to contain the pandemic and limit its adverse effects on the population.

Thus, the closure of the borders to the transport of people following the example of countries such as France and the USA, as well as the prohibition of large gatherings in all public places, was demanded as early as 17 March by an opposition party, the UPC,⁴⁹ and the doctors’ union.⁵⁰ The latter also called for subsidies and price controls on pharmaceutical products needed to fight the pandemic, such as hydroalcoholic gels and masks. At the same time, the government was also questioned the measures taken⁵¹ to mitigate the effects of the measures to combat the pandemic on the population, particularly the most disadvantaged and those directly affected by these measures.⁵²

Long before this turned into mood swings leading to the lifting of preventive measures, voices were raised to challenge almost every action or intervention of the government in its disease management.⁵³ These challenges came from ordinary citizens through social networks and in comments in the online press, political parties, trade unions or civil society, challenging the power of control. These non-governmental actors not only analysed the situation but also criticised the government’s approach by making counter-proposals. These stances have contributed to increasing the fragility of the government's pandemic management. Thus, in the face of the preventive measures enacted by the government, the leader of the opposition as well as legal actors⁵⁴ denounced severe violations of individual freedom. Nevertheless, they have also made it possible to direct the state’s actions more specifically towards the population’s needs.

The socioeconomic measures subsequently introduced to mitigate the consequences of the response to the pandemic were deemed unsuitable by trade unions and civil society organisations. The Syndicat National des artistes musiciens du Burkina (SYNAMUB) denounced the clannish management of funds allocated to cultural and tourist actors. The Coalition Against the High Cost of Living (CCVC), a civil society organisation, described the management of the pandemic in Burkina Faso as “haphazard” and made up of “trial and error”, intending to organise the plundering of the country’s wealth.⁵⁵ Another party, Soleil d’Avenir, questioned the government on the disastrous results of its pandemic management.⁵⁶

Conclusion and Recommendations

Like the rest of the world's leaders, the Burkinabè government was caught off guard by the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. Coinciding with a deleterious social, economic, political and security context, the emergence of the pandemic made it imperative for the government to show that it was capable of meeting this new health challenge while continuing to take on its pre-existing ones. This was all the more important as the disease appeared only a few months before the presidential elections due to take place on 22 November 2020.

The first measures taken by the Burkinabe government to counter Covid-19 did not target vulnerable population groups. However, government actions gradually became more inclusive as they were readjusted progressively under pressure from social movements and criticism from trade unions, political parties and the general population of the pandemic management and its lack of inclusiveness. This social pressure has thus contributed to reorienting the government towards more participatory management of the pandemic, through the multiplication of consultations with various actors. Also, the measures taken to mitigate the social and economic consequences of the response to the disease on the population have ultimately made it possible to include different categories of vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women, children who have been orphaned and are living on the street, prisoners and the elderly and poor female heads of household.

However, the specific needs of women and girls related to the higher impact of health crises on them due to unequal gender relations in societies were not taken into account in this reorientation of government action on the pandemic. Thus, issues such as the exacerbation of domestic violence during the confinement or closure of places of commerce and entertainment, the overload of domestic work due to preventive measures and school closures, as well as the potential increase in the de-schooling of girls, with the corollary of early marriage, do not appear in the interventions and actions taken in Burkina Faso to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is because the street and social networks were the main channels used by the population to express their concerns and disagreement with the government's response to the pandemic. However, these two spaces are still used less by women in Burkina Faso than men. On the one hand, they are not very present in corporate organisations or do not occupy a position that allows them to highlight the specificity of their situations, and on the other hand, their access to new information technologies and social networks remains low. The fact that the disease affects fewer women has probably contributed to the invisibility of women in political action against Covid-19 in Burkina Faso. Ultimately, the structuring of social and spatial inequalities in Burkina Faso, as well as the experiences of other epidemics that have impacted the West African sub-region, suggest that females, especially girls, as well as rural populations will bear the brunt of the pandemic, mainly as a result of measures taken to contain it.

However, the interventions and actions taken in Burkina Faso to respond to the pandemic suffer from many shortcomings that give the impression of a lack of control over its management. First, they lack clarity regarding their adequacy and continuity with existing development programmes, particularly those stemming from the National Economic and Social Development Plan. Furthermore, as they have not been adopted in a participatory approach, they suffer from a lack of inclusiveness. Thus, neither the specific needs of the populations defined as vulnerable in the national development programme nor those of the populations particularly affected by the security crisis are reflected in the responses and measures proposed by the government to deal with the pandemic.

Ultimately, while, as in almost all sub-Saharan African countries, the Covid-19 disease has had little effect on Burkina Faso in terms of health, the Burkinabè population suffered the social and economic costs of the pandemic in the long term. The pandemic responses constitute risk factors for increasing the vulnerability of already disadvantaged populations, particularly girls and women. The effects resulted from the ad hoc manner in which responses were implemented, while the consequences of the measures taken to contain the pandemic have a potentially long-term impact on populations (Bandiera et al., 2020; Burzynska & Contreras, 2020).

In our recommendations and flowing from the analysis, Burkina Faso needs to democratise its decision-making spaces to make them more inclusive. Again, in times of crisis, the state must communicate clearly about programmes and their sustainability and continuity plans. It is also crucial for the state to own its plans and programmes, which must be fashioned to suit the various contexts in the country. Finally, vulnerable social groups such as women, people living with disability, youth, children, the aged and the extremely poor must be prioritised adequately in the implementation of social protection programmes.