Burkina Faso: Shipping around the Malthusian Trap

− Burkina Faso has experienced quite significant aggregate growth over the past two decades, but the economy has done a bad job in transforming that growth into poverty reduction. The key bottleneck preventing people from escaping poverty in large numbers is the still very high population growth in conjunction with the absence of major technological change in agriculture and any significant structural transformation of the urban economy. The related continuous rise in food prices, further pushed by regular droughts, not only erodes the purchasing power of the poor but also keeps children’s malnutrition and mortality at high levels and by now certainly constitutes a major risk for the political and social stability of the country. Dealing with Malthusian forces is the main challenge for Burkina Faso in the decade to come.