Three West African Countries have decided to hatch an agreement with Morocco on the North-West so that they may use the latter’s Casablanca ports to access the Atlantic Ocean for their exports and imports.
Burkina Faso, a country which of late has been making headlines worldwide, together with Mali, and Niger have reached an agreement with Morocco to secure access to the Atlantic Ocean through Moroccan ports.
The trio, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger happen to be landlocked countries.
This means they don’t have direct access to the sea and their only access to the ocean is to depend on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member states such as Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal for maritime trade and access to international markets.
But now under the new agreement with Morocco, the three Sahel nations will reduce their dependence on the seaports belonging to the ECOWAS member states, making them more flexible and less dependent on a single channel.
Previously in 2024 Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger signed a treaty as a step ‘towards greater integration’ between the three countries, in the latest indication to shift away from traditional regional and Western allies.
In another development Burkina Faso is now embarking on an extensive project to build the country’s roads now that the new leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, has taken over the State House.
Traore, who is essentially the most popular African President at the moment, is enjoying massive limelight on practically all social media feeds throughout the continent and beyond.
He is now working on Burkina Faso’s infrastructure, revealing that; previously the country had only 3,642 kilometers of paved roads. Burkina Faso covers an area of 274,223 square kilometers.
President Ibrahim Traore has launched a special project which aims at constructing 5,000 kilometers of tarred roads annually.
Captain Traoré has so far bought 900 heavy machines for the local contractors and workers to carry out the road building works.
Formerly known as the Republic of Upper Volta, Burkina Faso with its Capital at Ouagadougou gained Independence in 1960, a year before Tanzania and therefore is marking its 65 years of Independence in 2025.