Following the most recent coup to shake the jihadist-torn Sahel state, Burkina Faso’s new administration said on Wednesday that securing the country’s borders will be its top priority.
Around 4.9 million people, or a fifth of the population, in Burkina Faso, were told by a UN representative in New York that they urgently needed aid since many “mothers were compelled to feed their children with leaves and salt.”
At the first cabinet meeting under the new leadership of Captain Ibrahim Traore, who overthrew the previous government this month, Prime Minister Apollinaire Kyelem de Tembela laid out the nation’s priorities.
“It’s a government on a war footing that has been formed. It’s not a gala dinners government,” Tembela said in the capital Ouagadougou.
“The main and priority objective is securing the territory,” Tembela said.
“The second will be to do what is needed to improve the quality of life for the Burkina people,” he said.
The third aim will be to “improve the system of governance”, he added.
“Every Burkinabe who calls himself a patriot can contribute,” the prime minister said.
The 64-year-old lawyer who was appointed premier on Friday leads a 23-member cabinet that includes three military officers and five women to manage the nation until its anticipated return to civilian administration.
Colonel Kassoum Coulibaly was appointed minister of defense and veterans, a crucial role in a nation decimated by Islamist violence, and was one of the important positions in the cabinet that was revealed late on Tuesday.
Colonel Boukare Zoungrana, who is in charge of territorial management, decentralization, and security, and Colonel Augustin Kabore, who is in charge of the environment, are the other two officers.
Diet of “Leaves and Salt”
Five members of the former administration led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, which was overthrown in the most recent coup, are still in office.
On September 30, Traore led a group of disaffected subordinate officers in a coup, despite a protracted power struggle with Damiba.
Last Friday, he took office as interim president, promising to retake lost territory and facilitate a transition that would result in elections in July 2024. He is the youngest leader in the world at age 34.
Damiba, who has since fled to Togo, only overthrew elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore in January.
Anger over the failure to end a seven-year Islamist insurgency that has cost thousands of lives and driven up to two million people from their homes served as the driving force behind both coups.
More over a third of the country’s landmass is still ungoverned.
In Djibo, a city in the north that has been under jihadist control for three months, at least 10 troops were killed and 50 were injured on Monday.
To aid the army in battling the extremists, the authorities have launched a campaign to find 50,000 civilian defense volunteers.
As a result of jihadist attacks, Djibo’s population has increased by three times to 300,000, as painted by UN envoy Martin Griffiths.
“There were no goods in the market,” as little food could grow in the area and cattle had been driven out, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs said in New York following a trip to Djibo.
“Mothers were forced to feed their children with leaves and salt,” he said.
But as the trees grew dry, women began to risk “attacks, rape, and murder” by sneaking into neighboring communities at night to obtain leaves for their “sick and starving children,” he said.
He continued that dozens of other regions of Burkina Faso were suffering a similar fate.
He mentioned “road restrictions owing to armed groups’ presence, leaving people in need of food, medication, and other essential services.”
He stated that about 4.9 million men, women, and children in Burkina Faso “require urgent assistance,” despite the UN having been able to feed 1.8 million people this year.
That represents a population of more than a fifth.
Additionally, almost 10% of people had to flee their houses.
