Yennenga is the name of a princess from the kingdom of Dagomba, daughter of Naba Nedega and Queen Napoko, founder of the kingdom Moogo in present-day Burkina Faso. It is therefore this name that will bear a new town located some 15 km from Ouagadougou. Burkina Faso’s capital, like most African cities, is under significant demographic pressure. In 2015, it had just over 2.5 million inhabitants, compared to 1.6 million in 2012. On the scale of the African continent, it is estimated that cities will be populated by 24 million inhabitants each year by 2045. In Burkina Faso, the authorities decided to act by involving the private sector in a project to build a new and ecological city.
On July 12, 2018, the architecture agencies GCE-Immobilier, Architecture-Studio, Arcade Architecture, Beckmann N’Thepé Architectes, Coldefy & Associés Architectes Urbanistes and Hardel + le Bihan Architecte signed an agreement in Ouagadougou, which marks the beginning of the construction of the new and sustainable city of Yennenga. It is expected to accommodate 80,000 people on an area of 678 hectares. According to the architects who designed the project, Yennenga will have an innovative, ecological and harmonious triple dimension, taking into consideration the galloping demography in Burkina Faso.
An ecological city
The future city of Yennenga will run on clean energy. It will have a 270 MW solar power plant that will meet the needs of the city’s population. The water consumed here will come from a recovery and reuse system. Natural areas and public gardens will be developed in several corners of the cities.
The city of Yennenga will host 80,000 people © Architecture-Studio
Financing the construction of the future city of Yennenga
For the moment, Architecture-Studio and GCE-Immobilier have already started the excavation of the site where the infrastructures of the new city will be built. A local banking pool supports this project, for which GCE Immobilier assures to have contributed 5 billion CFA francs (7.6 million euros). The total infrastructure cost of the project amounts to nearly 50 billion CFA francs (over 76 million euros). This is not the first time that a new city will emerge from the earth in the land of honest men. 15 km north of Ouaga, in the village of Bassinko, the project to build a new town is currently underway. 14,000 houses will come into existence in the future town of Bassinko and will shelter 84,000 people.
Jean Marie Takouleu