Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is among the 10 poorest countries in the world, with more than half of its people living in extreme poverty. More than one third of Burkinabes are undernourished, and food insecurity is a structural problem. In 2013, 1.8 million people were food insecure and faced little prospect of improvement without fundamental changes to the root causes of their vulnerability. Changing rainfall patterns (shorter and unpredictable rainy seasons, droughts and floods) have contributed to dramatic shortfalls in food production. This has exacerbated the impact of other factors, such as poor basic services (health, education), bad governance, a high dependency on external markets, demographic growth, high urbanization rates,80 and (more recently) violence and extremism. Burkinabe families have been forced to sell their crops, farms and houses in order to pay debts, buy food and cover other basic needs. As a result, households’ capacity to cope with future shocks has diminished to a level where even normal times become bad times for the poor. Those without access to land have to rely on local markets, where prices are rising. The arrival of more than 40,000 refugees (and their cattle) fleeing from fighting in Mali has placed more pressure on people who are already highly vulnerable.
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1.8 million Number of people in Burkina Faso who were food insecure in 2013. Many families were putting any surplus from the harvest towards paying back debts incurred during 2012 crisis81