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Bobo-Dioulasso, 
Burkina Faso
1,125,023 people lived in Bobo-Dioulasso in 2025. It is the 460th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 2nd largest in Burkina Faso.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Bobo-Dioulasso's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Bobo-Dioulasso grew
Count 10 people in Bobo-Dioulasso in 1975 and the same count gives 100.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 1.5 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 2015 and 2020.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Bobo-Dioulasso through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Bobo-Dioulasso in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Burkina Faso · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Burkina Faso and its 28 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Ouagadougou). Bobo-Dioulasso is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Bobo-Dioulasso covered 170 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 42 km² of it. That is 38 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 3.2 times its size, and its people are 10 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Burkina Faso
Its share of Burkina Faso
Of every 100 people in Burkina Faso in 2025, 5 lived in Bobo-Dioulasso, which is 1.1 million people.
How to read this: shrink Burkina Faso to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Bobo-Dioulasso; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 456 Kazan Russia1,132,941
- 457 Sekondi-Takoradi Ghana1,127,436
- 458 Srinagar India1,126,638
- 459 Cologne Germany1,125,292
- 460 Bobo-Dioulasso1,125,023
- 461 Suhaj Egypt1,123,349
- 462 Auckland New Zealand1,123,094
- 463 Belgrade Serbia1,121,410
- 464 Enugu Nigeria1,115,303
In Burkina Faso, 2025
- 152 Ouagadougou3,206,222
- 460 Bobo-Dioulasso1,125,023
- 3287 Koudougou183,409
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Bobo-Dioulasso are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Bobo-Dioulasso publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries