Burkina Faso’s government has bet on rapid state-building. In a three-hour cabinet session on 16 April, ministers approved reforms that could redraw power. A 100-hectare plot in Dori becomes a Sahel science campus, replacing silence with lecture halls. Courts and prisons in Nouna, Bogandé and Tougan will reopen, reviving law where judges fled. Two thousand police slots—half reserved for women, specialists and families of fallen fighters—aim to rebuild trust in the uniform. A bill ends the public-works testing monopoly, and a new Faso Abattoirs Agency keeps meat profits at home.

The programme is domestically financed, aligning with Mali and Niger in the breakaway Alliance of Sahel States and rejecting donor tutelage. Yet jihadist attacks killed over 1 500 people last year, gold royalties wobble, and militia abuses push some Fulani toward extremists. Three clocks are already ticking: construction must outpace gunfire; revenue from nationalised mines must plug the deficit; and renovated courts must act independently despite stronger executive control.

If classrooms open before militants regroup, Burkina Faso may prove that bricks, books and fair trials—not foreign troops—will decide the Sahel’s next chapter.