Homosexuality has been banned and criminalized in Burkina Faso under the regime led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré.
Individuals convicted of homosexual acts or similar practices face 2 to 5 years in prison, in addition to financial penalties that can reach up to 10 million CFA francs, equivalent to roughly 17,000 dollars.
There are also sanctions for behaviors or acts that promote or advocate for LGBTQ+ practices, and foreign citizens who violate this new decree face immediate deportation.
This decision aligns Burkina Faso with over 30 African nations that legally penalize homosexuality.
Ibrahim Traoré’s government follows an economic strategy close to a nationalist, Pan-Africanist form of socialism, heavily inspired by the legacy of Thomas Sankara, the country's Marxist revolutionary leader from the 1980s.
Traoré openly rejects the Western free market.
Since gold is Burkina Faso’s main export, the Traoré administration radically shifted its stance toward foreign mining companies by revoking the exploration licenses of Western multinationals, nationalizing reserves, and taking direct control of them.
Furthermore, the government built the country's first state-owned gold refinery to process the metal locally, keeping the added value within the domestic economy.
The state also began investing directly in creating national industries, inaugurating state-owned food processing plants, such as tomato paste factories,and the country's first state-owned dairy and pharmaceutical factories.
By breaking ties with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Western axis, the government sought alternative financing and strategic partnerships with nations like Russia and China, utilizing a state and military cooperation model.
When he seized power through a coup d'état in September 2022, Traoré promised to hold elections and return power to a civilian government by July 2024.
However, in 2023, Traoré declared that holding elections was not the country’s priority while about a third of the national territory remained under the control of jihadist terrorist groups.
The regime's political behavior grew increasingly authoritarian, especially following drastic decisions made between early 2025 and 2026.
In early 2026, the government decreed the dissolution and banning of all political parties in the country, arguing that "party proliferation" caused internal divisions and hindered the fight against terrorism.
International and local media outlets were suspended or expelled.
Human rights activists, journalists, and government critics have been arbitrarily detained or forcibly sent to the front lines as punishment through the compulsory military conscription of dissidents.
Ibrahim Traoré himself publicly stated in speeches on state TV that Burkina Faso's population should forget the Western concept of democracy, claiming that this model "does not work for us" in the current context of national survival.
Although a significant portion of the local population supports Traoré due to his nationalist rhetoric and promise to restore security, the elimination of political pluralism, the banning of parties, and the unilateral extension of his own mandate meet all the classic criteria that define a contemporary military dictatorship.
Africa being Africa.
Will Burkina Faso actually succeed?
For "King" Ibrahim Traoré and his "court," it already has.
As for Burkina Faso as a whole, it's just another country with ambitions of becoming China, but it "probably" won't even surpass Angola...
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