As a country located in Africa according to Top-mba-universities, Burkina Faso is a parliamentary republic. According to the Constitution of June 1991, legislative power belongs to the Assembly of People’s Deputies elected by universal suffrage for 5 years; executive power, on the other hand, is exercised by the President of the Republic, who is also the head of the government and, as decided by a constitutional amendment of 2000, is elected by universal suffrage for a five-year term. The judicial system is based on French law and local customs. The old revolutionary people’s courts have been supplanted by the civil courts. The second degree of judgment consists of the Courts of Appeal which are located in the cities of Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso. The Supreme Court is the highest body responsible for the administration of justice. The death penalty is in force, but executions have not taken place since 1988. The armed forces are divided into army and air force; military service is carried out on a voluntary basis and lasts for 2 years. As for school education, primary education is free and compulsory and lasts 6 years. The secondary school is divided into two cycles: the first of 4 and the second of 3 years, the latter is of address. Although education is compulsory and free, attendance in schools is very low and the problem of illiteracy is very serious: the percentage of illiterate people is among the highest in the world (71.3% in 2007). In 1974 the
HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The geographical position and the predominantly tabular structure of the territory have made Burkina Faso, since ancient times, the natural transit region between the course of the Niger and the Guinean coast; from this derive the antiquity of the population and above all the complex stratification of its human types that result from the superimposition of Sudanese peoples and pre-existing paleonegritic populations. There are about a hundred ethnic groups in the country which, however, can be grouped into two large families: the voltaic one and the mande one; overall, it is estimated that there are at least 63 different ethnic groups, of which it is difficult to establish the exact percentage incidence. The most important group is that of the moved (48.6%), socially compact thanks to an ancient tribal loyalty: they mainly live in the central-northern regions of the country and gravitate to Ouagadougou, their ancient historical nucleus. Other ethnic groups are the fulbe (7.8%), the gourmantché (7%), the bobo (6.8%), the bisa-samo (6.5%), the gourounsi (6%), the dagari-lobi (4.3%); other groups, including the Tuareg and Mandingo, constitute 13% of the residents. The annual growth rate of the population, between 2000 and 2005, remained around 3.6%. The distribution of the residents is quite varied and irregular, with a density of 56 residents / km²; it is more concentrated in the central belt, occupied by the savannah, where agriculture is more developed. The urban population represents just one sixth of the population, and is concentrated in Ouagadougou, a political and administrative center and an important agricultural market above all for the nerve center it occupies in relation to the communications network, and Bobo-Dioulasso, important for industries and for road links with neighboring countries. The villages can accommodate from a few dozen and several hundred individuals. Built with mud and clay, they house as many groups of huts as there are family units linked by the bond of blood.
ENVIRONMENT
Burkina Faso has a wide variety of natural environments: sparse forests and turf cover the areas to the S, while to the N there are savannah, steppe and desert, near the Sahel. The vegetation has different aspects according to the character of the rainfall, luxuriant in the wet season, scarce in the dry season. Generally in the southern area, where humidity is higher, the tree savannah predominates, often replaced by sugar cane and rice crops, while in the central-northern part the grassy savannah prevails, where the most typical tree is the baobab, but not there are no acacias and euphorbias. AN the long duration of the drought period excludes the development of trees and even xerophilous grasses and bushes often grow stunted: the savannah gives way to the steppe, with low grasses and some gumiferous plants, and this in turn, when the grassy tufts they begin to thin out, at the sahel, the shore of the desert. The fauna has characters of great mobility in relation to the progress of the climatic cycle and is mostly made up of herbivores such as the hippopotamus, the buffalo and the antelope.. Burkina Faso is severely affected by two environmental problems: drought, which causes an advance of desert areas, and soil erosion. Furthermore, the high rate of demographic increase, the continuous deforestation, the increase in grazing areas and the limited natural resources of the soil do not allow us to imagine improvements for the conditions of the country also hit by rampant poverty. The protected areas are 14.4% of the territory and also include two national parks, the one called “W” and that of Kabore Tambi, where the animals live in their natural habitat.
