Burkina Faso's geography: a low plateau drained by three Voltas

How flat the Burkinabe plateau really is

Most of Burkina Faso is a peneplain, an old surface worn almost level. Wikipedia's geography article describes a gently undulating landscape with a few isolated hills here and there, the last remnants of a Precambrian massif, and Britannica describes a single extensive plateau that tilts slightly towards the south. A lateritic crust, red, leached and rich in iron, covers the crystalline rock beneath, and the main rivers have cut down through it. Britannica adds that much of the soil is infertile.

The only real break in the surface is in the southwest. There a sandstone massif rises to Mount Tenakourou, at 749 metres the highest point on the record, and the plateau ends at the Banfora Escarpment, a cliff about 150 metres high that faces southeast. Wikipedia gives the average altitude of the country as 400 metres.

The low point is where the sources part company. The catalogue's own record puts the lowest point on the Black Volta at 75 metres. Wikipedia's geography article gives 200 metres for the same river, and on that figure it says the difference between the highest and lowest ground in the country is no greater than 600 metres. Either way, the relief across 274,200 square kilometres amounts to a few hundred metres, and what shapes the land is water more than height.

Who shares the borders of Burkina Faso

The country has no coast and no maritime claims. Its land borders total 3,611 kilometres, according to Wikipedia's geography article, and they meet six states. Ouagadougou, near the centre, lies about 800 kilometres from the Atlantic, Britannica notes, and the transit ports that handle its cargo, Abidjan, Lomé, Cotonou and Tema, are on its neighbours' coasts, according to Wikipedia's article on the economy.

The frontiers were fixed by the Franco-British Convention of 14 June 1898 and by the boundaries of the French colony, and they were redrawn once in practice when Upper Volta was dismantled between 1932 and 1947, as the country's history records. The border with Mali runs through the Agacher Strip, fought over in 1974 and again in 1985.

Where the three Voltas run

The colony was named for the upper courses of three rivers, and they still organise the drainage of most of the country. Inside Burkina Faso the Black Volta is called the Mouhoun, the White Volta the Nakambé and the Red Volta the Nazinon. Britannica records that all three converge in Ghana to form the Volta, which runs to the Gulf of Guinea; the whole system is about 1,600 kilometres long and drains a basin of 398,000 square kilometres. A fourth tributary, the Oti, rises in the southeast of Burkina Faso.

The flow varies enormously with the season, and some riverbeds dry out completely in the dry months. Wikipedia counts only two rivers that flow all year, the Black Volta and the Komoé in the southwest. The north drains the other way, into the Niger basin, which takes 27% of the country's surface. Its tributaries there, the Béli, the Gorouol, the Goudébo and the Dargol, flow for only four to six months a year and still flood.

Downstream, the water that leaves the plateau ends in Ghana. Britannica records that the Black and White Voltas meet in north-central Ghana some 480 kilometres from the sea, and that the northern four-fifths of the Volta valley below them has been flooded by Lake Volta since the Akosombo Dam was completed in 1965. The Portuguese gave the river its name, meaning turn, for its twisting lower course.

Standing water fills part of the gap. The principal lakes are Tingrela, Bam and Dem, and the north has large ponds at Oursi, Béli, Yomboli and Markoye. Water shortage is a recurring problem, above all in the north, and Wikipedia records that 250 square kilometres were irrigated in 2003. Drinking water has spread further than irrigation: UNICEF figures cited in Wikipedia's country article show access rising from 39% to 76% in rural areas and from 75% to 97% in towns between 1990 and 2015. The same article credits the state utility, the National Office for Water and Sanitation, with bringing water to nearly 2 million more people in the four principal cities from 2000 onwards while losing less than 18% of it to leaks.

How the regions divide the land

The country lies mostly between latitudes 9° and 15° north, with a small area beyond 15°, and between longitudes 6° west and 3° east. Wikipedia's articles give 13 regions, each run by a governor, and 45 provinces; the country article counts 301 departments below them and the geography article 351. The extreme points fall on four borders: the northernmost on the border with Mali in the Sahel region, the easternmost on the border with Benin just south of the tripoint with Niger in the Est region, the southernmost on the border with Ivory Coast near the village of Kpuere in the Sud-Ouest region, and the westernmost at the tripoint with Mali and Ivory Coast in the Cascades region.

Several regions are named for the land. Boucle du Mouhoun takes its name from the Black Volta, Hauts-Bassins means upper basins, Plateau-Central is named for the central plateau and Sahel is the semi-arid north; Cascades holds the westernmost point. The others take their names from their direction: Centre, Centre-Est, Centre-Nord, Centre-Ouest, Centre-Sud, Est, Nord and Sud-Ouest. Britannica adds that each region is divided into provinces under a high commissioner, and each province into departments.

Why the river valleys stayed empty

Britannica records the land for several miles on either side of the Volta rivers is mostly uninhabited, because of the tsetse fly, which carries sleeping sickness, and the Simulium fly, which carries river blindness. Villages instead cluster towards the centre of the country on higher ground away from the valleys.

The result is an uneven map. Britannica puts about half of the population in the densely settled eastern and central regions and describes the rest as scattered. Wikipedia's country article gives densities that sometimes exceed 48 people per square kilometre in the south and centre. More than two-thirds of the people are rural, and the World Bank counted 28.9% of the population living in towns and cities in 2025.

The principal towns are Ouagadougou on the central plateau, Bobo-Dioulasso in the west, Koudougou, Banfora, Ouahigouya, Pouytenga and Kaya. Bobo-Dioulasso, in the west, was the end of the railway from Abidjan until the line was extended to Ouagadougou in 1955.

How rainfall falls away from south to north

Rain is the variable that matters most. Britannica gives annual rainfall of about 1,000 millimetres in the south and less than 250 millimetres in the north, and divides the country into two climate zones: a semi-arid Sahelian steppe in the north with three to five months of often erratic rain, and a Sudanic zone in the south with a tropical wet and dry climate and more rain. Wikipedia's geography article draws three zones instead.

Britannica describes four seasons. A cool dry season runs from mid-November to mid-February, with nights dropping to about 16 °C. A hot season follows until June, with maxima of about 40 °C in the shade, when the harmattan blows hot, dry and dusty off the Sahara. The rains last from June to September, and an intermediate season runs on to mid-November. Wikipedia starts the rains in May or June and notes they are shorter in the north; the British government's travel advice gives June to October and warns of floods and landslides in that period.

Ouagadougou sits in the Sudano-Sahelian band. Its annual rainfall is about 800 millimetres, according to Wikipedia's article on the city, with the hottest weeks in March and April and maxima that can reach 43 °C.

The extremes are as much a part of the climate as the averages. Wikipedia's country article describes a range from severe flooding to extreme drought, and insect swarms, locusts and crickets among them, that destroy crops. Drought and desertification, overgrazing, soil degradation and deforestation are listed as the main environmental problems.

What grows on the savanna

Two ecoregions meet in the country, the Sahelian acacia savanna and the West Sudanian savanna. In the north, Britannica describes prickly shrubs and stunted trees that flourish in the rainy season; to the south they give way to scattered forest, which thickens into gallery forest along the banks of the perennial rivers. The shea tree, known in French as karité, and the baobab both grow wild in the south, and shea nuts are one of the crops the country exports.

The tree cover is shrinking. Wikipedia's geography article, drawing on figures for 2020, gives forest as about 23% of the land, 6,216,400 hectares, down from 7,716,600 hectares in 1990; almost all of it is naturally regenerating, none of it is counted as primary forest, and about 16% lies inside protected areas. The World Bank series gives forest cover of 26.4% in 2000 and 22.2% in 2023. Arable land was 21.93% of the total in 2012, and permanent crops covered 0.26%. Planted forest is a small share of the total, 177,100 hectares in 2020, and Wikipedia records that all forest land was in public ownership in 2015.

Under the soil there is more variety. Wikipedia lists gold, manganese, limestone, marble, phosphates, pumice and salt, and Britannica places a large manganese deposit at Tambao in the northeast, where transport has held back extraction.

Which parks protect the remaining wildlife

Britannica lists buffalo, antelope, lions, hippopotamuses, elephants, crocodiles and monkeys among the animals of the country, and the main Wikipedia article adds leopards, cheetahs, caracals and spotted hyenas. Its geography article considers the African painted dog extirpated from Burkina Faso, the last sightings having been in Arli National Park.

Most of what survives is in the east. The W-Arly-Pendjari Complex, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1996 and extended in 2017, covers 1,714,831 hectares across Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin, a contiguous mosaic of nine protected areas. Burkina Faso's share includes its part of the W Regional Park, Arly National Park and the hunting zones of Koakrana and Kourtiagou. UNESCO describes the complex as holding 85% of the savanna elephants of West Africa and the only viable population of lions in the area, along with cheetahs, leopards and the African wild dog, and it lists poaching, illegal grazing and the spread of farmland as continuing threats. UNESCO received state of conservation reports on the complex in 2024, 2025 and 2026.

Elsewhere the protected areas are smaller: the Léraba-Comoé Classified Forest and the Mare aux Hippopotames in the west, Po in the south-centre, and the Nazinga game preserve. The British government's travel advice, current in October 2026, lists national parks and nature reserves among the places where attacks could take place, and the east of the country, where the largest parks are, among the areas with frequent attacks.