What I hate about the IMF and World Bank is that very often they report growth rates in aggregate and not per capita. Burkina Faso’s population growth rate is about 2.8%, so these projections of 4%-5.2% are really 1.2%-2.4% growth per capita, which really is miserable. Moreover, much of the projected GDP growth is coming from gold mining, and the distribution of that income is highly skewed. So the picture remains one of a really big bulge of poor youth seeing few opportunities for rapidly growing incomes.
Growth is projected to increase moderately from 4 percent in 2014-15 to 5.2 percent in 2016, as the broad-based recovery anticipated in the wake of the November elections has been dampened by the January terrorist attacks. Following almost two years of political crisis and transition, the central policy challenge facing the authorities is to create the necessary fiscal space to deliver tangible improvements in the quality of life of the Burkinabè people.
Michael Kevane 