Burkina Faso Armed Forces
combined military forces of Burkina Faso
The Burkina Faso Armed Forces (French: Forces armées du Burkina Faso) are the military of Burkina Faso. The service branches of the armed forces include its Army, the Air Force of Burkina Faso, the National Gendarmerie, People's Militia. Being a landlocked country, Burkina Faso has no navy.
History
Origins
The National Army was created on August 3, 1960 by Law No. 74-60/AN, following Upper Volta's accession to independence. It was formed on the basis of the former French colonial army and comprised officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted personnel.
At its inception, it was structured around the 1st Upper Volta Battalion, composed of five infantry companies: two stationed in Bobo-Dioulasso and three in Ouagadougou. The official transfer of command between the French and Voltaic military authorities took place on November 1, 1961. Since then, November 1 has been celebrated annually as the anniversary of the National Armed Forces. The Air Force was integrated into the National Army on November 25, 1965, five years after the creation of the National Army.
The public source identifies “Burkina Faso Armed Forces” as combined military forces of Burkina Faso. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Burkina, Faso and Armed.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3022671. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1961 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “Burkina Faso Armed Forces” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.