Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso: Heavy Defense Burden Amid Weak Electoral Institutions

Burkina Faso's economy reached $23.12 billion in gross domestic product for 2024, per World Bank WDI figures, with per-capita output of $981.99 the same year and a population of 23,548,781. Government debt stood at 48.8 percent of GDP in IMF WEO figures for 2026.

Military posture

SIPRI's 2025 Milex data put Burkinabe defense spending at $891.56 million, equivalent to 3.3 percent of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series for that year — a notably high share, calculated against SIPRI's national accounts rather than the World Bank GDP figure cited above. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 7,000 active-duty personnel in 2022, with a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.00088059937 for the same year, a measure that aggregates demographic, industrial and military weight into a single index of relative state power.

Governance

V-Dem v15's 2025 indicators show an electoral democracy index of 0.134 and a liberal democracy index of 0.103, both low readings on the index's 0-to-1 scale, pointing to a political system with little competitive content. The state capacity index stood at 0.482 for the same year, a markedly higher reading than the two democracy indices in the same bundle, suggesting the state retains more administrative reach than its level of political competition would imply on its own.

Energy

Primary energy consumption totaled 0.0846 exajoules in 2023, per Our World in Data's energy series, and electricity generation reached 1.69 terawatt-hours in 2024. Both oil and gas production were recorded at zero terawatt-hours, though that reading carries a 2016 date, well before the other energy figures in this bundle.

Data gaps

The oil and gas production figures are stale, dated 2016 against 2023-2024 dates for the rest of the energy series. No reserves figure appears in this bundle for Burkina Faso, so external liquidity cannot be assessed here alongside the debt figure above. The governance indices, dated 2025, and the remaining economic and military figures, dated 2022 through 2026, otherwise carry recent reference years.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).