Ouagadougou, the Centre & the East

The Mossi kingdoms that dominate this region trace their origin to Princess Yennenga, a warrior daughter of a Dagomba king in present-day Ghana, and her son Ouédraogo, remembered as the ancestor of the Mossi rulers. Tenkodogo, in the Centre-Est, is regarded as the oldest of the kingdoms, while Ouagadougou became the most powerful, its ruler the Mogho Naba. The Mossi, with their mounted armies and elaborate court hierarchy, resisted the Sahelian empires to the north for centuries. To the east, the Gourmantché built their own kingdom around Fada N'Gourma, and to the south lived the Gurunsi and Kassena, organised in smaller chiefdoms.

The French took Ouagadougou in 1896. It became the capital of Upper Volta. After independence in 1960 Ouagadougou grew rapidly and became the stage of the country's coups and uprisings, including Thomas Sankara's revolution of 1983 — he had commanded the commando training centre at Pô in the south — and the popular uprising that ended Blaise Compaoré's rule in 2014.

Since the late 2010s the insurgency has spread into the Est and Centre-Nord, where armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have fought the army and its civilian auxiliaries, the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland. Rights groups have accused both the armed groups and government forces of killing civilians. The military government led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré has ruled from Ouagadougou since 2022.

This is Mossi country, and Mooré is the language of daily life across the centre. The Mogho Naba still holds a short ceremony in his Ouagadougou palace each Friday morning, re-enacting a legend of a king prevented from riding off to war, and local chiefs, the naba, keep an important role in land, marriage and dispute settlement. Muslims are the largest religious group, with Catholic and Protestant churches strong in the towns and traditional practice widespread.

Ouagadougou is one of Africa's film capitals. FESPACO, founded in 1969, fills the city every two years, and its Étalon de Yennenga prize is named after the Mossi princess. The SIAO craft fair, bronze casters in the city's artisan quarters and the granite sculptures of Laongo reflect a strong visual-arts culture, while Koudougou's Nuits Atypiques festival celebrates music from the region and beyond.

In the south, the Kassena of Tiébélé paint their houses with patterns and symbols handed down among women. In the east, the Gourmantché keep their own language and royal court at Fada N'Gourma, and Fulani herders live across the whole region.

Ouagadougou had about 2.4 million people at the 2019 census and continues to grow as displaced families and job seekers arrive. It is a low-rise city of wide avenues, mopeds and sprawling informal districts. Koudougou, with around 160,000, is the third-largest city; Kaya, Tenkodogo, Ziniaré, Manga and Fada N'Gourma are the main provincial centres.

Around the capital, people farm millet, sorghum, maize and vegetables, and market gardens along the dams supply the city. Artisanal gold mining employs many in the Centre-Nord and Est. Koudougou, once a cotton-textile town, is known for its university and its role in protest movements.

The insurgency weighs on everything. Kaya and other towns have taken in large numbers of displaced people, schools and clinics in the countryside have closed, and supply roads to towns in the east have at times been cut. In Ouagadougou, life continues in the markets, maquis and churches, under tight political control and with frequent rallies in support of the government.

The meal of the centre is tô, a stiff millet, sorghum or maize porridge served with a sauce of okra, baobab leaves or sorrel, flavoured with soumbala, fermented néré seeds. Babenda, a Mossi dish of sorrel and other leaves cooked with soumbala, groundnuts and a little rice, is a traditional family favourite, and gonré, bean-flour cakes steamed in leaves, are sold at markets.

Ouagadougou is famous for its grills. Poulet bicyclette, lean free-range chicken, is roasted on charcoal along the city's roadside, and brochettes of beef, goat and liver, fried fish from the dams and riz gras, rice cooked in a tomato and meat sauce, are standard in the maquis. Benga, rice and beans with oil and chilli, is a cheap everyday meal.

Dolo, the millet beer brewed by women, is sold in courtyard cabarets on market days. Zoom-koom, a drink of millet flour, tamarind and ginger, bissap from hibiscus, and ginger juice are the everyday alternatives, alongside strong sweet green tea.

Ouagadougou's sights are its institutions and street life: the Mogho Naba's palace and Friday ceremony, the National Museum, the Grand Mosque and the cathedral, the Village Artisanal and the Bangr-Weoogo urban park. The Thomas Sankara memorial, with its tall statue of the revolutionary leader, stands at the Conseil de l'Entente, where he was killed. About 30 kilometres north-east, near Ziniaré, the Laongo sculpture park displays works carved directly into granite outcrops by artists from Burkina Faso and abroad. Manéga, to the north, has a private museum of Mossi masks and funerary art.

West of the capital, Koudougou has the earthen royal palace of Issouka, its markets and its festival. The old Mossi kingdom towns of Tenkodogo and Ziniaré and the Kaya region complete the plateau.

In the south, Tiébélé's painted royal court is the region's best-known sight, and the Nazinga game ranch lies nearby in the south. In the east, Fada N'Gourma was the gateway to the Arly and W national parks, part of the W-Arly-Pendjari UNESCO World Heritage Site shared with Niger and Benin, with elephants, buffalo, antelope and lions. The parks and the Est have been at the centre of the fighting and are closed to visitors.