12/30/2023 0 Comments Upper volta nowDespite internal divisions it has successfully avoided making party political allegiances and its thirst for economic and political democracy has held many an authoritarian government in check.Ī wave of strikes in 1980 led to the fall of the 14-year-old Lamizana regime and with it the conservative politicians who had governed for twenty years or more. The progressive trade union movement in the towns is another encouraging feature nowadays. One positive result of this experience, however, is that the need for consultation and organization at the village level is beginning to be understood. But it is the local planners and peasant farmers who have suffered - for they are the ones who are blamed when the projects fail, as they often do. The Voltaics have become the guinea pigs for every and any kind of aid. The years since independence have seen a succession of weak military and civilian governments - with a laissez-faire attitude that has provided a haven for foreign trading companies as well as the international aid community which is here en masse. But a subsistence farmer hasn’t much hope of ever obtaining credit for a plough. Banks make loans to civil servants to build villas. And there is no easy escape from the vicious cycle of poverty in most peasant communities. And stagnating food production, poor health and underemployment all contribute to the tragic exodus of the youth to the plantations of the Ivory Coast.Ĭoncentrating scarce resources in the towns has meant that Upper Volta has one of the lowest levels of literacy and health care in the world. This semi-feudal world has hardly evolved in 20 years of independence. The superficial prosperity of Ouagadougou, however, cruelly masks the naked poverty of the rural areas. Along the tree lined boulevards that the French left behind, the mopeds and the Peugeots of civil servants and businessmen now outnumber the donkeys and the bicycles of the poor majority. And spacious air-conditioned supermarkets serve the ‘Voltaic’ and expatriate elites. Under the watchful eyes of countless vultures, the colourful central market stocks everything from sorghum to Sony tape recorders. Things have changed now though - thanks to the Sahel drought of the 1970s and the subsequent foreign aid programme.Īfter a decade of ‘development’ Ouagdougou is now a bustling cosmopolitan city where the traditional is rapidly giving way to commercial push. UNTIL very recently Ouagadougou, the capital of Upper Volta, was a distant and mysterious town where few Europeans had ever ventured.
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