Tensions between the two countries have reached a peak. Burkina Faso’s military regime has announced that, with effect from Friday 26 June, it is “severing” diplomatic relations with France, which it accuses of “relentless activism” against its interests, following several years of severe tensions between the two countries. The junta led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, which has been in power since a coup in September 2022, pursues a policy of sovereignty, cracking down on any critical voices and taking a hostile stance towards the West, particularly France, the former colonial power. For its part, Paris has said it “regrets” this “hostile and unfounded decision”.
“The government of Burkina Faso hereby informs the national and international public that it has taken the decision to sever diplomatic relations with the French Republic with effect from today, 26 June 2026,” it stated in a communiqué read out on national television.
Burkina Faso’s military regime had already decided, in May, to ban the broadcast of the French television channel TV5 Monde, which it accused of “disinformation” and “glorifying terrorism”.
I’m admittedly not well-informed on this, but what do you base this on? Democracy is nice to have, but its absence does not automatically make someone more or less fucked, especially with the various elephants in the room that show up when talking about a poor country in Africa.
Thanks for calling me out on this; because you are right that just the fact of there being democracy alone does not say anything about how fucked an individual is. I based my statements on news that reached me from various sources, and while it’s too big a task to dig up those articles, I looked up some of the data to check how right I am. Turns out the people are mainly more fucked when it comes to political rights and civil liberties, less so when it comes to other important things.
Freedom House gives countries a ‘Freedom in the World’-score from 0-100, the oldest record for Burkina Faso is from 2017 (https://freedomhouse.org/country/burkina-faso/freedom-world/2017), and from then on it’s score decreases each year from 63/100 to 20/100 this year. If you’re genuinely interested please check all data there.
Healthwise, people aren’t as clearly less or more fucked then before; child mortality is still declining, and life expectancy is still increasing based on data from the WHO (https://data.who.int/countries/854). If you look at the graph there on Universal Health Coverage and Health Emergency Protection you can see a sharp decline in 2023, but a steady increase before the military coup which seems to be continuing from a lower base.
Economically it is also not as clearly good or bad. based on info from the world bank (https://data.worldbank.org/country/burkina-faso), gdp is increasing and poverty is declining. There was a sharp increase in inflation around the time of the coup, but at the same time unemployment decreased.
In case there is a tankie in the comments, yes these are all western institutions, i don’t care if you believe the data to be untrustworthy because i do trust the data despite their questionable impact on (some parts of) the globe.