BURKINA FASO IS A LANDLOCKED COUNTRY IN WESTERN AFRICA. It lies on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert.
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CLIMATE |
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Burkina Faso has a hot, tropical climate. The dry season lasts from November to May and the rainy season from June to October. In the north, hot desert winds increase dryness.
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Land of the Mossi
There are no written records about the early history of the people of Burkina Faso (buhr-KEE-nuh FAH-soe), and the study of archaeology and languages provides little information. Iron and ceramic objects have been found that reveal the way people lived, but archaeologists have not been able to date exactly when these objects were made.
The first people in the region almost certainly lived by hunting animals, gathering wild fruits and vegetables, and catching fish in local rivers. After these people came the known ancestors of the present inhabitants of Burkina Faso. These peoples settled in the area between four and five thousand years ago. They became farmers, growing crops such as millet and sorghum. They later learned how to work with iron to make weapons and tools, which they used to clear the forest and plant more crops.
The Mossi (MOE-see) arrived in this area sometime between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. They set up seven small but powerful kingdoms. These Mossi kingdoms are less famous in west African history than the great empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai for two main reasons. Since the Mossi kingdoms were not rich, they remained small at first. They had few natural resources, so the main trade routes from the forests of western Africa across the Sahara Desert did not pass through their lands. Second, western Africans south of the Sahara had no written languages in these times, and Muslim scholars from the north wrote much of the known history of western Africa. Since the Mossi people fought hard to defend their territory and resisted those who tried to convert them to Islam, no Muslim scholars lived within the Mossi kingdoms to record their early history.
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FACTS AND FIGURES |
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Status: Independent state Capital: Ouagadougou Major towns: Bobo-Dioulasso, Koudougou, Ouahigouya Area: 105,869 square miles (274,200 square kilometers) Population: 13,900,000 Population density: 131 per square mile (51 per square kilometer) Peoples: More than 60 ethnic groups, including the Mossi (who make up just over half of the total population), Bobo, Grunshi, Lobi, Senufo, Busani, Samo, Dyula, Fulani, and Hausa Official language: French Currency: CFA franc National days: Independence Day (August 5); National Day (December 11) Country’s name: Burkina Faso means "land of incorruptible men" in More, the Mossi language.
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For many centuries ordinary Mossi peasants were both farmers and warriors who learned to fight on foot and on horseback. These peasant-warriors gave the small kingdoms the strength to resist invasions from powerful empires such as Mali and Songhai. In turn, their cavalry raided weaker peoples and took slaves to sell in exchange for other trade goods.
The Mossi kingdoms saw themselves as members of the same family and rarely fought each other. If a Mossi kingdom was attacked by outsiders, other Mossi came to protect it. For nearly seven hundred years, the everyday life and the political systems of the Mossi evolved without interference from outside. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, the French arrived.
