Did Burkina Faso reverse its September 2025 ban on LGBTQ+ conduct, as of October 21, 2025? No, that's not true: Credible news outlets did not report that. The purported "unbanning" was not mentioned on relevant government websites in Burkina Faso, either.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on October 20, 2025. It opened:
BREAKING NEWS
Burkina Faso has UNBANNED Homosexuality
'We were wrong, this is not a western degeneracy, but a core African value' said president Ibrahim Traoré.
What's your thoughts on this?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/SocDem_Erika)
At the beginning of September 2025, Burkina Faso's parliament (archived here) amended (archived here) the Persons and Family Code law, criminalizing "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activity", reported Reuters (archived here). The BBC (archived here) cited Burkina Faso's Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, who said on state TV that, as translated by the UK's public broadcaster, "the law provides for a prison sentence of between two and five years as well as fines". He added that foreign-born people will be deported if caught.
A search for the keywords "Burkina Faso" and "homosexuality" on Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) did not show, as of October 21, 2025, that the country has reversed its course after that.
A search for the quote, attributed to Ibrahim Traoré in the post on X reviewed in this fact check, didn't show a single match among news articles (archived here).
The news section of the website of Burkina Faso's national parliament (archived here) did not show any news about the purported cancellation of the ban in question. Nor did the website of the president or the updates section on the website of the Department of Justice (archived here).
Burkina Faso (archived here) is a country in Western Africa to the north of Ghana with a population of roughly 23 million people. It gained independence from France in 1960 and received its current name in 1984.
Traoré (archived here), an army captain who rose to the leadership position through a coup d'état, has been in power since 2022.
