Soon after our visit to Zambia, Niklas and I left Stockholm once again, this time for Burkina Faso (West Africa), another country the Study Scholarship Program targets. For the fall semester of 2011, Sweden only managed to attract one student from Burkina, currently at Uppsala University. With our visit, we hoped to positively improve the number of Scholarship applicants for the fall semester of 2012.
Once in Burkina Faso our first impression, being from Sweden, was the fantastic weather: we were swept away with Sub-Saharan temperatures of approximately 38 degrees Celsius on a daily basis, even though the country was getting closer to what they called ”winter”.
Panorama view of Ougadougo, capital of Burkina Faso
Our first visit was to the University of Bobo, a four-hour drive from Ouagadougo (the capital of Burkina Faso). We where very lucky to have the opportunity to speak to some 200 students.
Meeting students at University of Bobo-Dioulasso
Leaving Bobo, to drive back to Ougadougo where we where staying, we were lucky enough to pass the beautiful Grand Mosque in Bobo, built in the late 1880´s.
Grand Mosque in Bobo Dioulasso
Back in Ouagadougou we spent the next few days visiting a number of universities, one of them the University of Ouagadougou with over 35,000 students at Bachelor and Masters levels. Along with the students we met, we also met with government officials.
On the left; Owe Andersson Chargé d'Affaires in Burkina Faso, followed by Head of Assambus, Researcher and Niklas Dahlberg last on the right.
We managed to catch up with the local alumni association “Swedish and Burkina be friendship association” in Swedish: ”Vänskapsföreningen Burkina Faso – Sverige ASSAMBUS-BF”.
An extraordinary experince for us was the press confrence held on December 1, the same date as Universityadmissions.se opened for international applicants. Visit our Youtube channel to se the TV interview and coverage, in French. As a result, we increased the number of visits to www.studyinsweden.se from Burkina Faso with an astonishing 25000%.
