A video purportedly showing Burkina Faso’s military president, Ibrahim Traore, announcing that the country will no longer be importing uniforms for its police and army has surfaced online.
An X user, @PO_GrassRootM posted the video with a caption that read:
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CLAIM
Video shows Traore announcing that Burkina Faso will no longer be importing military uniforms.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the video is FALSE.

Burkina Faso, a landlocked country is one of the West African countries taken over by military junta. Others are Mali, Guinea, and Niger. In January 2022, Burkinabé President, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, was deposed by the junta led by Lt Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. Later in September 2022, Damiba was ousted by another coup, bringing Ibrahim Traore to power. He was officially appointed as president in October 2022.
Secondly, our fact-checker subjected some keyframes obtained from the video to Google Reverse Image searches and we found out that the video has been online since May 2024. In the original video, Traore addressed the audience in French while talking about military cooperatives, a topic entirely different from the thematic focus of the viral video.
An earlier version of the video was posted by a YouTube account, Burkina24 TV with a caption in French:
“Coopérative militaire et paramilitaire d’épargne et de crédit: Ibrahim Traoré échange avec les FDS” translated as “Military and Paramilitary Savings and Credit Cooperative: Ibrahim Traore interacts with the FDS.”
A further search using some keywords from the above caption led us to a statement published on the Burkina Faso military government’s website about the event.
The search shows that the video depicted when Traore presided over a meeting of the Military and Paramilitary Savings and Credit Cooperative (COMIPEC) of Burkina Faso on Friday, May 17, 2024.
The cooperative, scheduled to be operational in 2025, is an initiative of the nation’s Head of State, which aims to offer innovative financial and non-financial services to the Defense and Security Forces (FDS) for their full development.
In his original speech, Traore emphasized the importance of improving the living conditions of military personnel and their families.
He noted that the cooperative would help FDS members overcome financial challenges and encourage investment in agriculture and livestock sectors to support national food self-sufficiency.
However, there was no part of the statement suggesting that the country will be producing military and police uniforms locally.
Our fact-checker also searched online but couldn’t find any credible platform that reported the purported development.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video showed Traore announcing that Burkina Faso will no longer be importing military uniforms is FALSE; there was no mention of such topic in the original video.
Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via [email protected] and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.