WaterAid Burkina Faso and the budget-monitoring group CIFOEB presented an updated water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH) financing study at a Ouagadougou workshop on 30 September, according to LeFaso.net. The study covers 2017-2025 with projections through 2030, and aims to track sector investment trends, financing mechanisms, and obstacles to spending execution. The report quantifies a concrete shortfall: Burkina Faso needed to mobilize 852.74 billion FCFA (about €1.26 billion) between 2023 and 2025 for universal WASH services, against only 154.18 billion FCFA secured, leaving a gap of 698.56 billion FCFA. LeFaso.net
WaterAid Burkina Faso country director Dr Lucien Damiba told the workshop that reliable data is essential to inform public decision-making, noting that the country has faced a succession of security, climate, health and economic crises with direct effects on living conditions, and that the WASH sector is among those most affected by these crises.
Per-capita WASH social spending fell from 3,192 FCFA in 2017 to 2,027 FCFA in 2025, while executed WASH expenditure dropped from 80.72 billion FCFA to roughly 67 billion FCFA over the same period, with an average execution rate of 62.84% (rising to 88.66% when a specific budget account, the CAST, is excluded). State resources account for an average of 82.52% of sector financing channeled through the national budget and the CAST, compared with 7.67% from loans and 9.81% from non-reimbursable grants — a financing mix that implies a structural reliance on debt-generating instruments over aid grants. External financing is projected to rise to 36.21 billion FCFA in 2026, up from 21.42 billion FCFA in 2025.
This is a recurring annual exercise WaterAid and CIFOEB have run since 2022, with prior editions including a December 2025 validation workshop, explicitly designed to inform parliamentarians ahead of budget votes and to give the Ministry of Environment, Water and Sanitation and technical and financial partners a reference baseline. No published communique, binding budget-line decision, or government commitment resulting from the 30 September session has been reported. CIFOEB has no formal statutory authority over the national budget process, so the workshop functions as an advocacy and technical-dissemination exercise aimed at informing the coming budget debate rather than a binding governance decision.