Burkina Faso farmers growing pineapples amid push for self-sufficiency

Can pineapples grow in the Sahel region of Africa? Amid a political push for self-sufficiency, one farmer is proving that the tropical fruits can thrive.

Ducks walk between rows of pineapples.

Beneath their feet, the soil is red, sandy and stony.

It’s hardly the lush setting usually needed to support pineapple plants.

But this farm in arid, landlocked Burkina Faso is part of national efforts to grow the fruit.

The government wants to reduce overall reliance on imports and adapt to an ever-harsher climate in the dry heat of Africa's Sahel region.

"There were stereotypes. We ourselves were victims of this," says farmer Oumarou Compaoré. "We said to ourselves that we are in a Sahelian country. All we can do at the end of the day is cotton, corn, sorghum."

Pineapples have become a symbol of sovereignty in Burkina Faso: they are grown inside a military base in Ouagadougou, and part of the country’s formal development plan as it seeks to boost food self-sufficiency.

In April, a basket of pineapples sat beside the Burkinabé flag as military leader Ibrahim Traore gave an hours-long interview to international media on state TV.

Part of a wider push for the country to rid itself of external dependence, pineapples are one of many ways food has turned political–authorities have boasted about Burkina’s increased tomato paste production, and banned rice imports in April this year with a stated goal of facilitating local production

Compaoré pivoted to growing pineapples during COVID-19. He comes from a family of farmers, his grandfather having won awards for farming under former president Thomas Sankara, but said there was pressure growing up to get into bureaucratic work.

“But somewhere, I still had this attraction, this love of agriculture,” he says

Pineapple farmer Kaba Séré says when she was young, she too was told Sahelian countries could not grow things like pineapples.

“When we saw what Oumarou was doing, in reality, we knew that it was feasible,” she says. She has now expanded her farm to about 60,000 seedlings.

“It’s a reality–pineapples grow in Burkina,” she says.

Food sovereignty has long held an important position in political discourse in Burkina Faso.

Beverly Ochieng, a senior analyst at Control Risks, says it is a part of Burkina Faso’s social fabric.

"If you're going back as far as Thomas Sankara, who had been the president between ‘83 and ‘87, he was really big on not just receiving food aid because there was a drought at the time when he was in power, but also ensuring that people are able to cultivate their own lands," she says. "He had a line which was roughly along the lines of, if people really wanted Burkina Faso to be less dependent on aid, they wouldn't just be providing them food aid, they would be giving them tractors, they'd be giving them fertilizer."

President Traore has in many ways modeled his leadership on Sankara’s, challenging Western influence in Africa and pushing for the country to be self-reliant.

But Ochieng says the push for food independence is not just about political ideology.

“Being able to have food on the table is extremely important. If you're not able to feed a country, people become disgruntled.”