Cotton farmers in Burkina Faso have sent a 100,000-signature petition, through their delegation, to the World Trade Organisation summit, which kicked off in Cancun, Mexico this week. Unable to travel to Mexico, the farmers hope that their demands to eliminate the cotton subsidies, being enjoyed by their counterparts in wealthy nations, would be taken seriously at the WTO negotiations in Cancun on Sep. 10-14.

Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has managed to enrol nearly half its children in primary school thanks to an increase in the number of trained teachers, the construction of special schools for late starters and the extension of a free school meals programme.

The impoverished West African nation of Burkina Faso is giving serious consideration to planting genetically modified cotton due to the destruction of nearly half its crop seeds annually by caterpillars resistant to pesticides.

In Burkina Faso, Gueswende Public Primary School addresses local poverty and national environmental issues through agricultural education. Through a gardening programme at school, pupils are growing vegetables and maintaining a fruit orchard. A portion of the produce goes to improving the diet of the school lunches while the other portion is sold.

Twelve years after Burkina Faso launched a campaign that outlawed female genital mutilation (FGM) in 1996 and imposed heavy penalties on circumcisers, the number of women undergoing the harmful practise is declining, officials said.