The majority of Burkinabe are engaged in subsistence farming growing peanuts, shea nuts, sesame, sorghum, millet, corn and rice as well as rearing livestock however the country, along with many West African countries, has serious water issues with only two rivers that flow throughout the year. As such, much of the food required is imported from abroad, with rice being imported from places as distant as the Far East. Naturally this has cost implications when dealing with such basic necessities.

The country's main exports are cotton and gold, and again, the country was badly hit by the economic global downturn in the latter part of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The dire economic situation in recent years has been exascerbated by the emergence of armed groups who have spread over the Sahel region causing a humanitarian and security crisis that originated in northern Mali in 2012. This conflict has now consumed the Liptako-Gourma area in the Mali-Burkina-Niger Faso border region and has led to a 1200% increase in the number of people forced to flee their homes in the area with the number of IDPs in 2019 jumping ten-fold to 560,000 with a further 200,000 people displaced by the beginning of 2020.