Behind the digital showcase, a nation’s foundations are cracking
As Ouagadougou hosts the National Days of Patriotic Commitment and Citizen Participation (JEPPC), the transitional government is rolling out its full communication machine. The “Alley of Services to the People” stands as the perfect showcase for the Popular Progressive Revolution (RPP) regime: e-criminal record, e-nationality certificate, digitalization of Universal Health Insurance (AMU). Everything is orchestrated to project the image of a modern, connected, and efficient state.
Yet behind this technological veneer and the triumphant figures brandished at ministerial gatherings, the country’s reality paints a far grimmer picture. This frenzy of administrative dematerialization resembles a communication gadget designed by and for urban elites, while the very foundation of the Nation erodes.
A technological showcase disconnected from reality
Administrative dematerialization has merit on paper. The expansion of the e-criminal record or the digitalization of judicial acts are undeniable technical advances. But for whom are these tools really designed?
With an internet penetration rate struggling to cross the 20% mark and 4G coverage largely confined to major urban centers, digital administration is a mirage for the vast majority of the population. Presenting online registration for AMU as a major success when it reaches only about 1.3% of the population is deceptive political framing.
Worse, this strategy deepens 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 the minimal conditions of existence and the cognitive and material capacities to benefit from it. The order of national priorities must be reorganized around two absolute emergencies.
Security: the indispensable 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 urgency for Burkinabe is not obtaining a civil status document from a smartphone, but surviving, finding shelter, and recovering their land.
- Physical access before digital access: Public services in a commune under terrorist control or whose telecommunications infrastructure has been sabotaged cannot be digitalized.
- The right to life before the right to e-service: The absolute vital priority remains restoring territorial sovereignty and securing people and property. Without security, the dematerialized state is just a specter with no territorial anchor.
Education: the sine qua non of digital inclusion
Even assuming security is restored and internet network 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 skills (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 conflict. Investing massive financial and human resources in servers and virtual platforms while generations of Burkinabe children are deprived of school is a strategic contradiction.
Rethinking ambitions to build on solid foundations
Wanting to digitalize 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 deploy its full potential and become a universally accessible service.
For technological progress not to remain a mere urban privilege or a political communication tool, Burkina Faso must reinvest in the heart of its regalian missions: securing the territory to restore peace, then educating the population to give it the means for autonomy.
