A military academy rises while civilians keep leaving
Burkina Faso has taken a step that its leadership frames as a cornerstone of strategic sovereignty: training its own military elite on home soil. The Tiéfo-Amoro Higher Military Education Institute is now tasked with preparing officers in strategy, command, crisis management and geopolitics. Its inaugural class numbers 28 trainee officers.
In principle, no one can dispute a state’s right to train its own soldiers. The contentious issue is not the existence of a military school. It is the timing, the scale, and the growing space the military appears to occupy in the national project.
Because while Ouagadougou speaks of strategic sovereignty, another reality persists on the ground: Burkinabè continue to leave their villages, their land and sometimes their country in search of safety elsewhere.
By the end of 2025, UNHCR counted more than 2.1 million forcibly displaced people in Burkina Faso, including over 2 million internally displaced. During 2025 alone, more than 221,000 Burkinabè fled the country, mainly to neighbouring states. In Côte d’Ivoire, UNHCR still recorded around 82,000 Burkinabè refugees as of June 2026.
One question therefore becomes unavoidable: what is the purpose of strengthened military sovereignty if part of the population still does not feel sufficiently protected to stay home?
Does Burkina Faso need this now?
This is where the debate turns serious.
Burkina Faso faces a security, humanitarian and social crisis that cannot be resolved solely by multiplying military structures. Training senior officers can be useful. Strengthening the army’s strategic capabilities may be necessary. But this must not obscure the most urgent priority: reclaiming territories affected by insecurity and enabling displaced populations to return home sustainably.
The paradox is striking. The more official discourse insists on sovereignty and military power, the more a basic question returns: why do so many citizens continue to seek safety beyond the borders?
This is not an accusation. It is a political and social contradiction that deserves scrutiny.
From army to state: the risk of a broader militarisation
The real issue is therefore not simply the creation of a military school. It is the expanding role of the military in building the new Burkinabè state.
The authorities say they want to adapt the defence apparatus to national realities and strengthen sovereignty. President Ibrahim Traoré regularly addresses the defence and security hierarchy directly, giving them orientations on the conduct of the war against armed groups.
Taken separately, these choices can be explained by the security context. But added together, a question emerges: is Burkina Faso simply strengthening its army to respond to a war, or is it gradually placing the military at the centre of the country’s organisation?
The distinction is fundamental. A state may need a strong army without becoming a state dominated by military logic. That is precisely the boundary Burkina Faso must avoid crossing.
For when the army becomes the preferred answer to almost every national problem, the risk is a gradual narrowing of the space given to other dimensions of reconstruction: civil administration, education, the local economy, justice, social services, rural development and the return of displaced populations.
Sovereignty is not measured by the number of uniforms
The Burkinabè authorities speak of sovereignty. Fair enough. But sovereignty should not be solely military. It must also be territorial, economic, food-related, institutional and social.
A sovereign country is one where a farmer can return to work the land without fearing an attack. A sovereign country is one where a family is not forced to cross a border to sleep in safety. A sovereign country is one where a school can operate without children being displaced by fear of violence. A sovereign country is, finally, one where the state is able to protect its citizens to the point that fleeing becomes the exception, not a survival strategy.
Yet displacement figures show the problem remains considerable. UNHCR estimates that more than 221,000 Burkinabè left their country in 2025.
The danger of a society that thinks only in terms of war
Burkina Faso is at war with armed groups. That is a reality. But a country cannot be built around war alone.
A war can justify strengthening an army. It must not necessarily become the matrix for all of society. This is where the stated ambition to train a new military elite deserves close attention.
Training a national military elite can strengthen Burkina Faso’s strategic autonomy. But this policy must not become the symbol of a deeper transformation in which the military ends up as the central reference of the state. Because at that point, the problem would no longer be only security-related. It would become institutional.
Ibrahim Traoré’s real test
The real test for Ibrahim Traoré’s government will therefore not be solely its ability to train officers, create military institutions or project a doctrine of sovereignty.
The real test will be whether Burkinabè can gradually return to their villages, reclaim their land, reopen their businesses and send their children to school without fearing for their lives. That is what populations expect.
For a country can have a perfectly trained army and still experience a deep crisis if its citizens do not feel sufficiently protected.
And that is precisely why Burkina Faso must ask itself this question now, before it is too late: by militarising the response to every problem, does the country risk losing sight of the problem it was meant to solve first guaranteeing the safety of its population?
Military sovereignty can be a tool. It cannot become an end in itself. And above all, it must never overshadow those in whose name it is supposed to exist: the Burkinabè people.
By Georges Essomba — Regional Policy and International Economics
