The N14 between Ouagadougou and Koudougou is busy, especially on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital. Heading westwards between Koudougou and Dédougou, the road becomes eerily quiet. Beyond Dédougou, in the direction of Nouna and the Malian border, it is empty, save for the occasional striding farmer, a hoe over each shoulder, the handles crossing at the chest.
The shadow of three massacres in 2022, atBourasso(22 killed),Namissiguima(12 killed) andNouna(at least 28 killed), lies over the area. Although the situation has improved, there are ongoing attacks: a farmer was killed in the road recently, says guide Kiawara Serges Telesphore, who advises that it would be sensible to remain in the central parts of the Boucle de Mouhoun region, of which Dédougou is the capital. To work here we need permission from the province’s high commissioner.
It is a public holiday, however, and government offices are shut. After making several phone calls, Telesphore beams. The authority of customary leaders is widely recognised in Burkina Faso and in early 2025 it was enshrined in the country’s laws.
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Albert Lombo Dayo, Dédougou’sChef de Canton,is responsible for 42 villages. His home is down the road fromgare melon,which is empty at the moment, watermelons being out of season. He sits on a throne, resplendent in a silver and white boubou made of Faso Dan Fani, Burkina’s famous hand-woven fabric.
Shoes come off, we bow low, take seats off to one side. We are here to speak about the weather, having heard that many of his subjects — farmers, in the main — have experienced a tyranny of floods in recent years. He speaks quietly in Bwamu.
A man to his right translates into French and another into English. Since assuming the chieftaincy in 2004, Dayo has received an increasing number of flooding reports from his “chefs de village”. “We have always had these heavy rains between May and August.
I used to pick fish up off flooded pathways as a child,” Dayo recalls, although he insists that farmers’ fields seldom flooded. The widespread flooding is a recent phenomenon, he insists, and it is not simply a consequence of increased rainfall or storm intensity but perhaps more the consequence of changes in the way the land is used. “There are more farmers, so more trees are poisoned and cut down to open new fields.
There is nothing to slow the journey of water. The rivers become full, the low areas flood,” he says, adding that a greater number of people farm where they should not — at the edges of rivers and ponds. Dayo’s take is broadly supportedby available meteorological data, which shows that statistically there had been no change in the amount of annual rainfall in Burkina Faso since the 1960s, yet the number of flooding events has increased in the 2000s.
There has been bigger rainfall variability, in other words, changes in when the rain comes and how much of it comes at once. Dayo is both an ardent traditionalist — the head of the region’s supreme council of traditional chiefs — and worldly, having served in Burkina Faso’s military for 39 years. His sub-text is clear: if you are looking for a straightforward story about climate change and its impacts, look deeper.
With that, we have the royal blessing to approach farmers directly. Our first stop is a farm outside Moudasso village, through which a small river runs. A church complex on the property was abandoned after the Bourasso massacre, which was claimed by theIslamic State in the Greater Sahara. On the evening of 3 July 2022, armed men on motorbikes lined up villagers in front of the church on a Sunday night and shot them.
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