At the heart of this transformation stands Lighting the Path (LTP), founded by Dawn Malcolm. Unlike many organizations that provide only short-term relief, LTP has embraced empowerment as its model. Women are taught to transform local resources — such as shea butter — into sustainable products like soap, building skills and enterprise that break cycles of dependency.
By The Independentist Correspondent
Burkina Faso, a landlocked nation at the core of the Sahel, is more than a story of hardship. It is a country where women and girls — half of the population of over 20 million — stand at the frontline of both vulnerability and transformation. For decades, they have endured the weight of gender-based violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), and economic exclusion. Yet today, the Sahel is writing a new narrative: one where women are no longer mere victims of circumstance, but architects of renewal.
From Shadows to Leadership
The statistics remain sobering. Girls are still pulled from classrooms to perform household chores. Many face sexual violence in schools and communities. More than half of all girls under 17 are forced into unregistered marriages, and 76 percent of women between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM — despite its ban since 1996. Economic inequality continues to deny women property, inheritance, and independence.
But behind these numbers is a powerful current of change. More than 85 percent of the population now supports ending harmful practices. The 2016 constitutional reforms, though imperfect, reflect this societal shift. And across Burkina Faso, women are taking their place not just as survivors, but as leaders of the Sahel’s renewal.
Lighting the Path: Building Sahelian Resilience
At the heart of this transformation stands Lighting the Path (LTP), founded by Dawn Malcolm. Unlike many organizations that provide only short-term relief, LTP has embraced empowerment as its model. Women are taught to transform local resources — such as shea butter — into sustainable products like soap, building skills and enterprise that break cycles of dependency.
Malcolm’s philosophy is clear: “It can’t just be hand-outs all the time. Women and people in poverty have to be empowered to write themselves out of poverty.”
Projects such as Girls for Girls, School for Girls, and Empowerment Work in Burkina Faso are rooted in this vision: advancing education, health, and livelihoods to secure long-term resilience. In a region tested by insecurity and climate shocks, women’s economic and social agency is proving to be the true measure of stability.
The Women’s Aid Fund: Health as Freedom
One of LTP’s most striking initiatives is the Women’s Aid Fund (WAF). It began with a single story: Elizabeth, a woman who lost her arm in a domestic assault, needed a prosthetic. The $1,700 cost was beyond reach, but with support from LTP, her life was transformed. From this seed, WAF grew into a broader platform addressing untreated medical conditions across Burkina Faso — from FGM injuries to obstetric fistulas suffered by child brides.
Here, health is reframed as liberation. In a society where women often sacrifice their wellbeing for their children, WAF restores dignity by affirming that women’s lives matter. A prosthetic, a fistula repair, or treatment for an infection can mean the difference between isolation and restored humanity.
The Sahel’s New Vision
What is happening in Burkina Faso mirrors the wider Sahel. The empowerment of women is not a secondary issue; it is the very foundation of the region’s survival. Communities cannot resist poverty, displacement, or climate pressures if half their citizens remain excluded. But when women lead — in classrooms, markets, fields, and village councils — entire nations gain strength.
Lighting the Path and the Women’s Aid Fund embody this philosophy. They do more than heal wounds; they reimagine what the Sahel can become. A region too often defined by crisis is now beginning to be defined by the resilience of its women.
The road ahead is long. Sexual violence, child marriage, and unsafe abortion remain daily threats. But the story of women in Burkina Faso is no longer told only in terms of suffering. It is being rewritten in terms of agency, resilience, and leadership.
And in that shift lies the Sahel’s greatest hope: that its renewal will be led by the very women who once bore its deepest scars.
The Independentist Correspondent
