16 April 2020 — Tricontinental

Gontran Guanaes Netto, O povo da terra dos papagaios (The people of the land of the parrots), 1982

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Burkina Faso, in the Sahel region of the African continent, has been struck hard by the global pandemic; officially reported deaths from COVID-19 are second only to Algeria in Africa. In the past sixteen months, nearly 840,000 people out of twenty million have been displaced by conflict and drought; in March alone, 60,000 people were forced from their homes. Last year, the United Nations calculated that the number of Burkinabè residents who had little access to food was 680,000; this year, the UN estimates that the number will rise to 2.1 million.

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