Kuwait Fund signs $20.5m loan for Burkina Faso airport

The Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) signed a loan agreement worth KD 5.8 million (USD 20.5 million) to fund the Ouagadougou Airport project in Burkina Faso. The project aims to achieve economic and social development in Burkina Faso and top improve its contact with other nations through the airport located 35km north of the capital city, Ouagadougou. The airport will respond to the increasing travel demands, incoming, outgoing or transitting, providing its services to around 1,000 travellers through three jumbo aircraft at peak hours. Signing the agreement on behalf of the Kuwaiti state fund was its Director-General Abdulwahab Al-Bader with Burkina Faso's Minister of Economy and Finance Lucien Marie Noel Bembamba. The agreement was signed in Kuwait on the fringes of the African-Arab Economic Forum, which precedes the higher level African-Arab Summit due in a week. KFAED has so far handed 15 loans to Burkina Faso worth a total KD 50.1 million (USD 177 million) for various key projects in the land-locked central African nation. Burkina Faso later signed another agreement with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa for the funding of the same project, according to a KFAED statement.