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Cities · Burkina Faso · capital
Ouagadougou, 
Burkina Faso
3,206,222 people lived in Ouagadougou in 2025. It is the 152nd largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the largest in Burkina Faso, where it is the capital.
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 Ouagadougou'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 Ouagadougou grew
Where Ouagadougou had 10 people in 1975, it had 420.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 4.4 million people in 2050. It passed a million people between 2000 and 2005.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: one column every five years, 1975 to 2050; its height is the number of people. Hatched columns are the UN's projection. The thin strip beneath says how sure the UN is of each figure: the stronger the colour, the surer. A blank means the place was not on the UN's list of cities that year.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Ouagadougou through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Ouagadougou in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Burkina Faso · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 28 cities in Burkina Faso in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there. The ringed dot in colour is Ouagadougou; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Ouagadougou covered 496 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 145 km² of it. That is 45 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 8.9 times its size, and its people are 42 times as many.
How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.
Of every 100 people in Burkina Faso
Its share of Burkina Faso
Of every 100 people in Burkina Faso in 2025, 13 lived in Ouagadougou, which is 3.2 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 Ouagadougou; 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
- 148 Algiers Algeria3,246,400
- 149 Fortaleza Brazil3,244,260
- 150 Kathmandu Nepal3,231,516
- 151 Kunming China3,228,117
- 152 Ouagadougou3,206,222
- 153 Durban South Africa3,177,927
- 154 Maputo Mozambique3,166,328
- 155 San Francisco United States3,163,486
- 156 Kalyan-Dombivli India3,163,424
In Burkina Faso, 2025
- 152 Ouagadougou3,206,222
- 460 Bobo-Dioulasso1,125,023
- 3287 Koudougou183,409
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Ouagadougou 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 Ouagadougou 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