Flag of Burkina Faso

What the flag of Burkina Faso looks like

The Burkina Faso flag is a simple bicolor. The upper half is red and the lower half is green, and the two bands are exactly equal. In the middle, centered on the line where they meet, is a single yellow star with five points. The flag has a width-to-height ratio of 2:3.

It has no coat of arms, text or other detail, which makes it one of the plainest flags in West Africa. The red, green and yellow are the pan-African colors. The flag is also shown in small formats such as the Burkina Faso flag emoji.

Burkina Faso flag meaning and symbolism

The colors are explained as follows:

• Red stands for the revolution that brought Sankara's government to power in 1983 and, more broadly, the struggle of the people.
• Green stands for agriculture and the richness of the land, which most of the population depends on.
• Yellow is the color of the star, which is described as the guiding light of the revolution.

The star links the flag to the pan-African movement that Sankara admired. These meanings were announced when the flag was adopted. Since the revolutionary government ended in 1987, many Burkinabe still read the star more generally as a symbol of hope and national direction.

History of the Burkina Faso flag

The area was part of French West Africa. A French colony called Upper Volta was created in the early 20th century, split up in 1932 and recreated in 1947. The territory became self-governing in 1958 and fully independent on 5 August 1960 as the Republic of Upper Volta.

The first national flag, adopted in 1959, was a horizontal tricolor of black, white and red. The three colors stood for the three branches of the Volta river that gave the country its name: the Black Volta, the White Volta and the Red Volta. It stayed in use through decades of coups and changes of government.

On 4 August 1983, Captain Thomas Sankara took power in a coup. His government launched a program of social and economic reform and, a year later, on 4 August 1984, renamed the country Burkina Faso, meaning roughly “land of upright people” in the Mooré and Dioula languages. A new flag and anthem were introduced at the same time. Sankara was killed in a coup in October 1987, but his successors kept the flag, and it has remained unchanged through later changes of government, including the military takeovers of 2022.

Similar flags in West Africa

Neighboring countries also use pan-African colors, though in different layouts. Ghana has a red, gold and green tricolor with a black star, and Mali has vertical green, yellow and red stripes. Burkina Faso's flag is the only one of these with two bands and a single yellow star. See all flags of Africa.