Burkina Faso
Capital: Ouagadougou · West Africa
The 'land of upright people', where Mossi kingdoms have endured for six centuries alongside masked traditions of the Bwa, Bobo and Lobi.
Ethnic communities
- MossiFounders of the Ouagadougou and Yatenga kingdoms; the Mogho Naba still reigns
- Bwa & BoboFamed plank masks and agrarian ritual societies
- LobiAcephalous society known for shrine sculpture and fortified homes
- Fulbe (Peul)Sahelian cattle pastoralists
More communities of Burkina Faso
- Bwa — Plank-mask makers of leaf-and-sun ritual theatre
- Bobo — Ancient farmers with Dwo mask religion and balafon feasts
- Gurunsi (Kassena, Nuna, Lela) — Painted-house architects of Tiébélé fame
- Senufo — Poro-society farmers over the Ivorian border
- Gourmantché — Eastern kingdoms of geomancy and horse lore
- Bissa — Groundnut farmers of the south-central belt
- Samo — Sourou valley farmers with masked ancestral rites
- Marka (Dafing) — Mande traders and indigo weavers of the northwest
- Dagara — Xylophone funeral masters straddling the Ghana line
- Tuareg & Bella — Sahara-edge nomads and former dependents in the Oudalan
- Dogon frontier villages — Escarpment kin along the Mali border
- Karaboro & Turka — Southwestern farmers of the Comoé headwaters
Languages
Major languages: Mooré, Dioula, Fulfuldé, French
Language families: Niger-Congo (Gur, Mande); Atlantic (Fula)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Mossi Kingdoms (Ouagadougou, Yatenga, Tenkodogo)
- • Gwiriko (Dioula)
Heritage sites
- • Ruins of Loropéni
- • Ancient ferrous metallurgy sites (UNESCO)
Cultural highlights
Deep-dive community profiles
Bambara (Bamana)
Mali's largest people — farmers of the upper Niger whose Segou kingdom, chi wara antelope crests and the six graded komo initiation societies made Bamanankan the nation's lingua franca and their art a canon of world sculpture.
Open deep profile →Dogon
Cliff-dwelling farmers of Mali's Bandiagara Escarpment whose intricate cosmology, mask society and granary-studded villages have made them one of the most studied — and most storied — cultures in Africa.
Open deep profile →Fulani (Fulbe)
The great pastoral nation of the Sahel — some 40 million people scattered from Senegal to Sudan, keepers of the pulaaku ethical code, founders of Islamic reform states, and among them the Wodaabe, whose Gerewol beauty festival is world-famous.
Open deep profile →Kassena (Gurunsi)
The painted-house builders of the Burkina–Ghana border — whose women cover the fortress-walls of Tiébélé in bold black, white and ochre geometry, and whose stateless earth-shrine villages held off the horsemen of the savanna kingdoms.
Open deep profile →Lobi
The fiercely independent farmers of the Black Volta — builders of fortress-houses (soukala), carvers of the bateba shrine figures that stand for the thila spirits, and a people who never accepted a chief, a king or a colonial officer without a fight.
Open deep profile →Mossi
The kingdom-builders of the Volta basin, whose Mogho Naba still holds court in Ouagadougou every Friday — a 500-year unbroken monarchy of horsemen, farmers and mask societies on the West African savanna.
Open deep profile →Senufo
Master farmers and carvers of the middle Volta savanna whose Poro initiation cycle takes twenty-one years, whose champion-cultivator staffs and firespitter masks rank among Africa's great sculpture, and whose balafon orchestras earned UNESCO honors.
Open deep profile →Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq)
The veiled lords of the central Sahara — matrilineal confederations who ran the desert's caravans for a millennium, write in ancient Tifinagh, and whose women own the tents, the poetry and the one-string imzad that carries the nomad soul.
Open deep profile →