Burkina Faso culture

Burkina Faso culture, people, food and festivals 

Burkina Faso's ancient and precolonial history is only known in fragments, due to the lack of early and consistent written sources and the limited archaeological information available. Recent excavations have shown that rich and stratified societies lived in permanent villages in the northeast around the year 1000C.E.In the south, the origins of the impressive but still undated "Lobi" ruins remain a mystery. The Mossi appear to have founded their kingdoms—the most important being Wagadugu, Yatenga and Tenkodogo—around the fifteenth centuryC.E.Written sources mention the Mossi in connection with raids on the Sahelian towns of Timbuktu and Walata, and throughout the Middle Ages as anti-Islamic enemies of the Mali and Songhay kings. Another early important precolonial kingdom was Gurma in the east. In the nineteenth century, several smaller states with an Islamic ideology formed, such as the Fulbe states of Liptako, Jelgooji, Barani, and the Marka states of Wahabu and Boussé. States like Kong and Kenedugu expanded into southern Burkina Faso. Within or between the spheres of influence of these states, politically non-centralized societies could maintain their autonomy and sometimes even expand.

French colonial armies conquered and occupied the territory beginning in 1895, thus thwarting the northern advances of the concurring colonial powers Britain and Germany. After the First World War, which brought massive oppression, popular uprisings, and their bloody suppressions, the French carved out the Upper Volta colony as an administrative unit from French West Africa. In order to assure a supply of labor to the French coastal colonies, Upper Volta was dissolved in 1932 and its territory divided among the Ivory Coast, French Sudan (now Mali), and Niger

The Mossi are the largest group and make up half the population. The Fulani are the second largest, forming around 8% of the population.

French is the official language and widely spoken in the towns and cities. However, in the countryside many people use the local languages, such as Moore/Moré (pronounced ‘more-ray’) spoken by the Mossi, Dioula (pronounced ‘Jula’) a trading language of West Africa andFulfulde, the language of the Fulani in the north.