Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou: A Capital Full of Life

Ouagadougou, known affectionately as Ouaga, is one of West Africa's most energetic capitals. The sprawling Grand Marché pulses with colour and trade, artisan workshops in the Zangouettin craft quarter turn bronze, leather and cotton into striking objects, and the city's restaurant scene serves everything from grilled brochettes at a roadside maquis to refined Burkinabe cuisine in elegant surroundings. Every two years Ouaga transforms into the continent's cinema capital when it hosts FESPACO, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival, the largest film festival on the African continent.

Landscapes from Forest to Sahel

The country's geography shifts dramatically from south to north. In the southwest, the Cascades region around Banfora offers lush greenery, the thundering Karfiguéla waterfalls and the rippling domes of the Sindou Peaks rising from savannah like a sculpture garden. Further north the land opens into the sweeping Sahel, where nomadic Fulani herders guide their cattle across golden plains and baobab trees stand as sentinels against vast skies. Nazinga Ranch in the south shelters elephants, buffaloes, hippos and crocodiles within a short drive of Ouagadougou.

Culture, Craft and Community

Burkina Faso's seventy-odd languages reflect a social fabric woven from dozens of distinct peoples, each with their own music, masks, and masquerade traditions. The SIAO craft fair held in Ouagadougou draws artisans from across Africa and is one of the continent's premier showcases for textiles, jewellery, woodwork and leather goods. Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's second city, has a slower, greener rhythm and is home to a grand mosque built from banco mud brick that remains one of the finest examples of Sudano-Sahelian architecture in the region.