According to the World Bank, Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has risen steadily over the past decade[needs update] to $1,720 (in purchasing power parity dollars) by 2016, thanks to consistently strong economic growth that peaked at over 8% in 2010.
[1] After declining to 1.9% in 2020 Burkina Faso's annual growth rate recovered to 6.9% in 2021 and is now at $918.15 USD[1] The economy remains dominated by the services sector, which contributed almost half (48%) of the GDP in 2013.
Burkina Faso is one of a handful of West African countries which have raised public expenditure on agriculture to at least 10% of GDP, the target of the Maputo Declaration (2003), which was reasserted in 2014.
The considerable efforts made in West Africa to reach the Millennium Development Goal of primary education for all are paying off, with the average enrolment rate having risen from 88% to 93% in the subregion between 2004 and 2012.
According to the ECOWAS Annual Report (2012), enrolment has increased by as much as 20% since 2004 in four countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Niger.
[2] Burkina Faso has one of Africa's highest levels of public expenditure on higher education, at 0.93% of GDP in 2013, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
[2] Before he died in December 2013, Nelson Mandela, a champion of education, lent his name to two graduate universities entrusted with the mission of producing a new generation of Africa-focused researchers, the African Institutes of Science and Technology in Tanzania and Nigeria.
[2] Within the framework of its Policy on Science and Technology (ECOPOST), ECOWAS intends to establish several centres of excellence of its own on a competitive basis.
Up until then, management of science, technology and innovation had fallen under the Department of Secondary and Higher Education and Scientific Research.
One of the key priorities is to improve food security and self-sufficiency by boosting capacity in agricultural and environmental sciences.
The creation of a centre of excellence at the International Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering in Ouagadougou within the World Bank project cited above provides essential funding for capacity-building in these priority areas.
[2] ECOWAS countries still have a long way to go to reach the African Union’s target of devoting 1% of GDP to gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD).
The strong economic growth experienced by the subregion in recent years makes it harder to improve the GERD/GDP ratio, since GDP keeps rising.
[5] Burkina Faso is among the top closest collaborators for the following West African countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Togo.
Vision 2020 proposes a road map for improving governance, accelerating economic and monetary integration and fostering public–private partnerships.
Countries are urged to promote efficient, viable small and medium-sized enterprises and to expose traditional agriculture to modern technology, entrepreneurship and innovation, in order to improve productivity.
[2] ECOPOST provides a framework for member states wishing to improve – or elaborate for the first time – their own national policies and action plans for science, technology and innovation.
[2] ECOPOST advocates the development of a science culture in all sectors of society, including through science popularization, the dissemination of research results in local and international journals, the commercialization of research results, greater technology transfer, intellectual property protection, stronger university–industry ties and the enhancement of traditional knowledge.
Each institute provides academic programmes in basic and applied mathematics, including cosmology, finance and computing, as well as interdisciplinary fields like bioinformatics.
[2] The West Africa Institute was established in Praia (Cabo Verde) in 2010 to provide the missing link between policy and research in the regional integration process.
The think tank also organizes political and scientific dialogues between policy-makers, regional institutions and members of civil society.
[2] The Ebola epidemic in 2014 highlighted the challenge of mobilizing funds, equipment and human resources to manage a rapidly evolving health crisis.
In 2015, the United States of America decided to invest US$1 billion over the next five years in preventing, detecting and responding to future infectious disease outbreaks in 17 countries, within its Global Health Security Agenda.
The others are: (in Africa) Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda; (in Asia): Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Viet Nam.