Public service digitization in Burkina Faso: a priority out of touch with reality?
As Ouagadougou hosts the National Days of Patriotic Engagement and Citizen Participation (JEPPC), the transitional government is rolling out an impressive communication campaign. The “People’s Services Alley” serves as a showcase for the Progressive People’s Revolution (RPP) regime: e-criminal record, e-nationality certificate, and the digitization of Universal Health Insurance (AMU). Everything is staged to project an image of a modern, connected, and efficient state.
But behind this technological display and the triumphant figures touted at ministerial grand events, the country’s reality paints a much darker picture. This frenzy for administrative dematerialization looks like a communication gadget designed by and for urban elites, while the very foundations of the nation are crumbling.
A technological showcase disconnected from reality
Administrative dematerialization has merit on paper. The expansion of the e-criminal record and the digitalization of judicial documents are undeniable technical advances. But for whom are these tools really designed?
With internet penetration struggling to exceed 20% and 4G coverage largely limited to major urban centers, digital administration is a mirage for the vast majority of the population. Presenting online enrollment for AMU as a major success when it reaches only about 1.3% of the population is misleading political framing.
Worse, this strategy creates 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 modernization.
The real priorities of the Burkinabe nation
For a state’s digitalization to make sense, the population must first have minimum living conditions and the cognitive and material capacities to benefit from it. The order of national priorities must be reorganized around two absolute emergencies.
Security: the essential prerequisite for any citizenship
No dematerialization can flourish in a territory fragmented by insecurity. With over two million internally displaced people fleeing terrorist violence, the urgent need of the Burkinabe 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 digitize public services in a commune under terrorist control or whose telecommunications infrastructure has been sabotaged.
- The right to life before the right to e-services: The absolute vital priority remains restoring territorial sovereignty and securing people and property. Without security, the dematerialized state is just a specter without territorial roots.
Education: the sine qua non of digital inclusion
Even assuming security is restored and internet coverage is deployed across the entire territory, access to dematerialization hits 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 had no 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 Burkinabe children are deprived of school is a strategic misstep.
Rethinking ambitions to build on solid foundations
Wanting to digitize 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 restoring security so populations can 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 dematerialization unfold its full potential and become a universally accessible service.
For technological progress not to remain a mere urban privilege or a tool of political communication, Burkina Faso must reinvest in the core of its regalian missions: secure the territory to restore peace, then educate the population to give it the means for autonomy.