Pô
village in Burkina Faso
Pô is a city in southern Burkina Faso. It is the capital of the province of Nahouri. The main ethnic group (making about 60% of the inhabitants) is the Kasséna, a group close to the Gurunsi. It is said to have been founded in around 1500 and is home to an army base, including the Académie militaire Georges Namoano.
In 1983, an army unit under Blaise Compaoré led a rebellion which resulted in Thomas Sankara's release from prison and ascension to the presidency.
On October 31, 2014 Compaoré announced he had left the presidency and that there was a "power vacuum"; he also called for a "free and transparent" election within 90 days. Yacouba Isaac Zida then took over the reins as head of state in an interim capacity. It was reported that a heavily armed convoy believed to be carrying Compaoré was traveling towards the southern town of Pô. However, it diverted before reaching the town and he then fled to Ivory Coast with the support of President Alassane Ouattara.
"Pô Department", centered on Po, is one of five departments within the province of Nahouri in the Centre-Sud Region of Burkina Faso.
“Pô” enters the record as village in Burkina Faso. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what village, Burkina and Faso can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Pô” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, village, Burkina and Faso provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1756613. Authority coordinates are 11.167, -1.150. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1500, 1983 and 2014.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Pô”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Pô primary sources, Pô archive and village research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Pô”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Pô” 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.