Claim: Burkina Faso Is Completely Debt Free
On August 28, 2025, an X user, @zoomafrika1, made a claim that Burkina Faso had become debt-free after settling all its national debt. The post featured an image of the country’s military leader, Ibrahim Traoré, with the inscription, “Ibrahim Traoré has paid off his international debt. Burkina Faso is now in control of their natural resources.” This was captioned, “Burkina Faso is now debt free 🙌🏿.”
When this report was published, this claim had over 29,200 views, and about 1,800 replies, reposts, quotes, likes and bookmarks.
VERIFICATION
At the end of March 2024, Burkina Faso’s external debt was CFA 3,097.52 billion ($5.1 billion), and total public debt reached CFA 7,148.29 billion ($11.8 billion). This was also confirmed by a report from CEIC, a global company known for providing macroeconomic data. The quarterly report released by the country’s Ministry of Economy, Finance and Planning, at the end of 2024 showed that Burkina Faso had arrears of around $5.6 billion to international creditors. The West African nation is also a recipient of financial support from the International Monetary Fund, IMF and data from the lending institution shows that Burkina Faso’s outstanding credit as of August 31, 2025 was 337,943,000 in Special Drawing Rights, SDRs.
Meanwhile, total IMF financial support to Burkina Faso under an Extended Credit Facility, ECF, arrangement as of June 2025 was SDR 96.32 million (about 131.3 million dollars). The 48-month ECF arrangement was approved on September 21, 2023.
The IMF showed that Burkinabè authorities cleared domestic arrears outstanding at the end of 2023. However, external debt persists and the country remains under a couple of IMF financing arrangements.
CONCLUSION
The claim that Burkina Faso is debt-free is FALSE. A review of multiple sources affirm that the country still owes millions in external and domestic debt, and remains under IMF financing.
