Madar (Ouagadougou) - Burkina Faso's Legislative Assembly of the People (ALP) on Monday, October 19, 2026, adopted in plenary a bill defining strategic economic, commercial and industrial entities and banning their full or partial privatisation, the news site Lefaso.net reported.
The law strengthens the state's powers to oversee, control and monitor these entities and to hold or increase stakes in their capital. It also allows the state to take stakes in private entities that may later be deemed strategic.
The text sets criteria for classing an entity as strategic, notably its links to national sovereignty and state security against internal and external threats, and its impact on the country's social and economic balance. No list of companies has been published.
Industry Minister Serge Poda, who defended the bill before lawmakers, said "the state now has all the powers to oversee, control and monitor public entities". He said the previous 1993 law, which shielded strategic companies from the privatisation wave of the 1990s, had "revealed a number of shortcomings" over time.
The current economic and political context and the demands of industrial sovereignty made a revision necessary, he said.
