As Ouagadougou glows with the colours of the National Days of Patriotic Commitment and Citizen Participation (JEPPC), the transitional government rolls out its full communication machinery. The “Allée des services au peuple” stands as the ideal showcase for the regime of the Popular Progressive Revolution (RPP): e-criminal record, e-nationality certificate, digitalisation of Universal Health Insurance (AMU). Everything is orchestrated to project the image of a modern, connected and efficient state.
Yet behind this technological veneer and the triumphant figures brandished at grand ministerial gatherings, the country’s reality imposes a far more bitter observation. This frenzy of administrative dematerialisation resembles a communication gadget designed by and for urban elites, while the very foundation of the nation crumbles.
A technological showcase disconnected from reality
Administrative dematerialisation is not without merit on paper. The expansion of the e-criminal record or the digitalisation of judicial acts constitute undeniable technical advances. But for whom are these tools really designed?
With an internet penetration rate that struggles to cross the 20% threshold and 4G coverage largely confined to major urban centres, digital administration is a mirage for the vast majority of the population. Presenting online registration for AMU as a major success when it reaches only about 1.3% of the population is a misleading political framing.
Worse still, this strategy deepens a violent social divide: on one side, a connected urban minority able to request documents in a few clicks; on the other, millions of invisible citizens, deprived of the most basic mobile network and ignored by this two-speed modernisation.
The real priorities of the Burkinabè nation
For a state’s digitalisation to make sense, the population must first have the minimum conditions of existence and the cognitive and material capacities to benefit from it. The order of national priorities must be reorganised around two absolute emergencies.
Security: the indispensable prerequisite for any citizenship
No dematerialisation can flourish in a territory fragmented by insecurity. With more than two million internally displaced people fleeing terrorist violence, the urgency for the Burkinabè population is not to obtain a civil status document from a smartphone, but to survive, find shelter and recover their land.
- Physical access before digital access: You cannot digitalise public services in a commune under terrorist control or whose telecommunications infrastructure has been sabotaged.
- The right to life before the right to e-service: The absolute vital priority remains the restoration of territorial sovereignty and the securing of people and property. Without security, the dematerialised state is merely a spectre without territorial anchorage.
Education: the sine qua non condition for digital inclusion
Even assuming security is restored and the internet network deployed across the entire territory, access to dematerialisation collides with an insurmountable wall: illiteracy.
- The literacy divide: A major part of the population masters neither reading nor writing, let alone computer tools (digital illiteracy). Offering complex web platforms to citizens who have not had access to basic education is a systemic aberration.
- The schooling emergency: Thousands of schools remain closed due to the conflict. Investing massive financial and human resources in servers and virtual platforms, while generations of Burkinabè children are deprived of school, constitutes a genuine strategic contradiction.
Revisiting ambitions to build on solid foundations
Wanting to digitalise the administration before securing the country and educating its citizens is like painting the facade of a house whose foundations are collapsing.
The logical sequence of development first requires the restoration of security to allow populations to live and produce on their territory. It then requires a massive educational effort to give citizens the ability to read, understand and interact with modern society. Only when this fundamental base is consolidated can dematerialisation deploy its full potential and become a universally accessible service.
For technological progress to not remain a mere urban privilege or a political communication tool, Burkina Faso must reinvest in the heart of its sovereign missions: secure the territory to restore peace, then educate the population to give it the means for autonomy.