train_bobo.jpg

This week, i've chosen a picture taken in Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is one of the enclaved country of West Africa. People from Burkina don't have any access to the ocean, which means of course that they are very dependant on the road and train traffic coming from the countries that have access to the sea. The train on the picture does the trip between Abidjan (Capital of Ivory Coast) to Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso). 1200 kms from the coast of Ivory coast to Ouagadougou in approximativly 27 hours... The train is the only one linking these to country and one of the only one in all of the subregion. During the crisis in Ivory Coast the train line has been closed. This has been an economical catastrophy for many people, from the ones selling fruits and food through the windows at each stops which was representing a real economy and a leaving business for thousands of familly along the railway, to the people that are running a business in Burkina needing to get what they shipped through the port of Abidjan. Even the people from Niger suffered from this closing as the ones leaving not far from the border were also benefiting from the railway. Before the crisis the port of Abidjan was the central point for all the equipment, merchandises and food coming from overseas. With the crisis, and almost all the roads closed, this traffic went dramatically down forcing the people to find another place to ship their goods.. Cotonou (Benin), and Accra (Ghana) became the new places for the boat traffic, but there is no railway from Brukina Faso to these two towns..and for Accra, people have even now to deal their business in English! On top of that, since the railway company has been bought by the french company Bolloré the prices of the tickets went dramatically up. Luckily the traffic is back on the line between Abidjan and Ouagadougou, but it seems to stop everytime the tension is going up and the activity that was going on along the railway is far from being back... That really shows how linked and interdependant these countries are and how important that they stay politicaly stable, otherwise it's not only the country itself that suffers but the whole region.