ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The APR Panel of Eminent Persons is pleased to present the assessment report for Burkina Faso. The assessment could obviously not have been completed successfully without the extraordinary cooperation of a great number of people. The panel emphasises the unflinching support of the Burkinabe people and, in particular, the personal involvement and availability of His Excellency Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso, who was resolutely involved throughout the APRM process. The panel also expresses its gratitude to the APRM national focal point, Mr Assimi Kouanda, principal secretary to the president of Burkina Faso, and his team: Mrs Adélaïde Zabramba, vice president of the APRM National Council (NC-APRM); Prime Minister Tertius Zongo and his government; Mr Jean-Baptiste Natama, permanent secretary of the APRM; all other members of the National Governing Council; the regional governors and other deconcentrated authorities; and the mayors and other officials of the local communities for conducting the self-assessment exercise meticulously and diligently and for facilitating the country’s assessment by the APRM team with the same competence and determination. A great number of representatives of public authorities, the private sector and Burkinabe civil society sensitised grass-roots communities, popularised the APRM and provided extremely useful information to the review mission. The panel wishes to thank, in particular, women’ organisations, youth organisations, trade unions, employers’ organisations, intellectuals, farmers, traditional and religious authorities, traders, and artisans of Burkina Faso. The panel seizes this opportunity to express its sincerest thanks to the different media, both local and international, that covered with objectivity and level-headedness all the activities of the mission and on the entire national territory, thus contributing to the popularisation of the APRM in the country and the subregion. This report, the ninth of its kind, is the fruit of several months of effort and work by a team of top-level African experts. They worked patiently and relentlessly, under the guidance of Prof Mohammed Seghir Babès and Mrs Marie-Angélique Savané, members of the APR Panel of Eminent Persons, and under the enlightened direction of the panel. The APR Secretariat provided administrative support. The team comprised Mr Mbaya J. Kankwenda, Mr Donatien Bihute, Mr Ousmane M. Diallo, Mr Yenikoye Ismael Aboubacar, Mr Karim Ben Kahla, Mr Léopold Donfack Sokeng, Mr Babacar Gueye, Mr Guy Fortunat Ranaivomanana, Mrs Houda Mejri, Mr Daniel Gbetnkom, Mr Moise Nembot, Mrs Sylvie Kinigi, Mr Kango Lare-Lantone, Mr Mahmoud Ben Romdhane, Mr Omar Saïp Sy, Mr Dalmar Jama and Mrs Atany Kagnaguine. The APR Panel expresses its profound gratitude to all of them and emphasises the debt it owes to them. It would not have been possible to assess the four focus areas of the APRM in Burkina Faso without the decisive and unconditional support of the strategic partners of the APRM. They are the African Development Bank (ADB), the African regional office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United v