Why Burkina Faso, and what we've built there

Burkina Faso sits in the central Sahel, and the water picture there is one of the world's hardest. Only about 25% of the population uses water that's classified as safely managed, and just 47% have access to even basic services — with the gap steepest in rural communities, where roughly three quarters of Burkinabe live. About one in three rural water facilities is out of service at any given time, often because there's no budget or fuel to keep it running. Climate change is making it worse: Sahel temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average, and water availability across the region has dropped more than 40% in the last 20 years. In 2021, with funds raised the year before, we partnered with Compassion International and another donor to help.

Our project funded solar-powered boreholes in Leo and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, reaching more than 1,800 people. The solar choice was deliberate: in a region bordering the Sahara, where the electrical grid is unreliable and diesel-pump fuel is expensive and hard to source, solar removes the failure modes that take so many rural wells out of service. The pumps run when the sun shines — which is most days here — and the communities aren't dependent on outside fuel deliveries to keep their water flowing.

"We managed with one old water pump that produced bad water and people would wait in line for long hours to fetch water from it... This change means that we can stay healthy." — Madjida, age 15, Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso isn't one of our coffee origins, but every bag we sell from Uganda, Nicaragua, and our World Wonders microlots helps fund work like this.