The literature reviewed in this annotated bibliography demonstrates that youth digital activism in Burkina Faso cannot be understood as a technologically driven rupture with the past, but rather as a historically embedded and structurally conditioned mode of political participation. By providing a systematic analysis of the structural and political conditions shaping youth digital activism in Burkina Faso, it situates the broader comparative research project on youth digital activism, electoral politics, and political change in the Sahel
The findings from 32 peer-reviewed and scholarly works published between 2015 and 2026 address four interrelated domains, including:
- Political and governance history;
- Electoral processes;
- Military rule and coups;
- Youth–state relations; and
- Socio-economic implications of demographic pressures.
Through comparative analysis, their findings converge to reveal the persistence of a limited access political order marked by elite bargains and weak institutional legitimacy; the centrality of economic grievance and political exclusion as drivers of mobilisation; the erosion of electoral credibility culminating in the societal acceptance of military intervention; and the emergence of digital platforms as alternative arenas of contestation within an increasingly constrained civic space. Together, these dynamics situate digital activism within a broader crisis of representation and governance, in which formal democratic procedures coexist with deep deficits in substantive political inclusion. Ultimately, this annotated bibliography clarifies how digitally mediated participation both reflects and reshapes ongoing struggles over legitimacy, authority, and democratic change in Burkina Faso.
