Many Burkinabè discovered trading with the blocking of company accounts and the strong reaction
that this has generated from investors. But what has been talked about the least in this news is the
case of individual traders. Mostly young people who have sometimes abandoned studies and jobs to
devote full time to this activity, with only one dream in mind: to become millionaires in a few clicks.
It is a narrow staircase that leads to the first floor of an apartment building, transformed into offices, in
the zone 1 district of Ouagadougou. In one room, a large table on which half cups of coffee
emptied, computers, electrical wires and cell phones compete for space. Around this joyful
disorder, Ousmane, Mamadou and Rasmané - all in their twenties - have their eyes riveted on their screens where
multicolored graphics are displayed that change in fractions of a second. We are far from the atmosphere
bustle of the trading rooms of the famous stock exchanges of New York, Tokyo, Paris, London or Berlin. Only the
voices of kids having fun in the adjoining courtyard and reaching us through the half-open window
break the silence of the place on this morning of October 10, 2019. The atmosphere is almost religious. The three
young people are not dressed to the nines like any self-respecting financial wolf either, but
their objective is the same: to make as much money as possible on the world financial market which brews daily
astronomical sums. A universe where fortune seems to be just a click away and where even the little ones
as they can play in the big leagues. It's been two years since the three friends took over this premises
with the help of an elder. A degree in economics for Ousmane and Mamadou, in transport and logistics for
Rasmané, internships that were difficult to obtain, a job that could not be found were enough to convince them that the studies
did not guarantee success, or at least wealth.
Mamadou is the first of the group to have heard of trading. He was immediately seduced by this
activity that gave him what he always wanted: financial autonomy. It was in 2017. A year earlier, a
trading company had just been created in Burkina and was beginning to introduce young people to the mysteries of the stock market.
The licensee paid and trained. He multiplied the formations, spending a lot of money, online, in
books. "With this money, I could have done all kinds of studies in Burkina", points out the man who is
also the most talkative of the gang. He and his comrades, to start their business, also invested in
basic equipment: sufficiently powerful computers and routers for Internet connection. AT
Alternatively, they can also trade on their mobile phones.
By embarking on this activity, the apprentice traders were well aware of the risks that they
were taking. The financial market is a double-edged sword, full of marvelous promises but also
great disappointments. The jackpot won in one second can be lost the following week. But it is to
believe that the urge to make a fortune is greater than the fear of breaking your teeth in this universe
ruthless. To be a trader is to be a cash daredevil. “The Burkinabe is too fearful. He wants that
be something 100% certain before committing. The others will look for ways to avoid the
risk and then profit,” notes Mamadou regretfully. The “others” in Africa are the Ghanaians, the
Togolese, Nigerians, South Africans; examples that come up frequently in their mouths.
30,000 francs per day
It is 1 p.m. in Ouagadougou, 8 a.m. in New York. It is from this time of day that the stock market
begins to really come alive since the United States, which makes the market, has just woken up.
Mamadou chose this moment to introduce me to some basic rules of trading. The stock market, he explains to me
learnedly, a finger pointing at the screen, it's like a traditional market, except that here the exchanges are
dematerialized. It sells and buys currencies (euros, dollars, yen, yuan, etc.), commodities (gold,
money, cotton, coffee, oil, etc.), financial securities (stocks, bonds, etc.). The price of these products varies
according to an age-old law: the law of supply and demand. If the demand for a product increases, the price of
this will increase. Conversely, if the supply exceeds the demand, the price decreases. The job of a trader is
therefore to buy a product when its price is low and to resell it when the price rises to get a
profit. In practice, price variation is dependent on several factors, including socio-political, economic, financial and climatic. Thanks to a great knowledge of the market and
its trends, we can in theory predict the evolution of the price of a product. It requires
multidimensional knowledge and a great capacity for analysis. And not to be surprised
by the news that moves the market, very volatile, the three speculators do not lose an eye throughout
of the day on sites specializing in economics and finance, and even generalists. They communicate
frequently on what they find and find important.
Lately, for those who speculate, among other things, on the evolution of the dollar against the yuan
Chinese, Donald Trump's tweets and statements, as part of the trade war against
the Middle Kingdom, are particularly watched. A phrase or a word from the tenant of the White House
can make the dollar soar. This capacity for anticipation, they acquired it above all in practice,
sometimes in pain. "We burned accounts (Editor's note: in the jargon, losing all your capital) several
times before we had our own system that works now," says Ousmane between clicks.
Now, he says, they know where they are stepping, not to say the cursor. Today, this little game of
the scholarship brings them about 50 dollars a day, or about 30,000 CFA francs, which they receive thanks to
transfers to their credit card. “We have big goals. In two years, we want to make 2000 dollars (1
200,000 FCFA) per day,” Mamadou says confidently. For him as for others, trading represents
the future, and they have no intention of giving up the profession they have just taken up: "We have the same perception
that Warren Buffet (Editor's note: 3rd richest person in the world in 2019, who made his fortune by investing mainly in
stock Exchange). Even at 80 you can be on the market, you cannot find an activity as profitable as
stock Exchange ".
Franck, a 20-year-old trader, says nothing else: “Trading is one of the best jobs in the world.
We work internationally, we don't work to earn CFAs but dollars, euros. And
you can make a lot of money easily", enthuses, eyes lit up, the one who gave up
his studies after a whirlwind stint at university. We met him in a WhatsApp group
of apprentice-traders where he shared his knowledge with the other members and displayed his earnings to
motivate them. This young man with a touching face and a calm voice spins the metaphor about the
financial market: "It's a train full of fruit. You need to know where this train is going to pass. You
position in its path, remove fruit and let the train continue. You don't have to be greedy."
This geek, madly passionate about the Internet, very quickly looked for the best way to do business to escape the hell of the
campus. Since he discovered trading, he spends hours and hours, day and night,
in front of his machine or on his phone, to "take fruit from the passing train", to the great displeasure of
his parents. But he is decided. Today, he claims to earn between $700 and $800, or nearly $500,000.
CFA francs, per month. "And it increases day by day," he says, assuring that he will become a billionaire
in two or three years. Appointment is made! Two years ago, he embarked on the adventure with 300,000
CFA francs, fruit of his savings.
game of nerves
November 18, 2019. We have an appointment with another private trader, Housséni Bonkoungou. In
this case, it is really special since, unlike most of those who speculate on the
financial market, has invested in cryptocurrency, this means of payment that only exists on the Internet. The
first virtual currency, Bitcoin, was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009.
Bonkoungou, he has the look of the job. He receives us in impeccable tuxedos, in his offices in the neighborhood
Hamdalaye where an oversized cable TV is hung on a continuous news channel. Three
computers adorn his office. Coming from a family where the trade is transmitted from father to son, taking the
Risk, he informs us, is second nature to him. After unfortunate experiences in the
Forex where he lost a fortune, he started in 2014 to "decrypt", so to speak, cryptocurrency. And has
sometimes traveled from Abidjan to Dubai to improve. Winning bets. A bitcoin exchanged for example
$0.001 in 2009 reached $20,000 at the peak in 2017.
It's a little after 6 p.m. And his trade of the day is rather losing. His update of the day, 12,000 dollars, more than
7 million CFA francs, is down 37%. He is therefore losing nearly 3 million francs
CFA. And the tumble continues before our eyes at a frantic pace. But Housséni remains, surprisingly,
very calm. Noting that the reporter that I am was more anxious than him, he laughs mockingly at me:
“That's trading. It's a game. You can win a lot and you can lose a lot too”. In
reality, the holder of the baccalaureate was sure of his fact. “I am convinced that it will go up”,
he predicts. And to add in a professorial tone: “In trading, you must not give in to panic. The
psychology accounts for 60% in the profession”. In a miraculous way for the layman and in a few
minutes, so much so that we did not see the time pass, from red the market turned to green.
As if under the effect of a prodigious magic, his capital begins to bear fruit. The bantering laugh
d'Housseni is getting stronger. Thanks to this quits or double which puts a strain on the nerves, he claims to win
30% of what he bets per month as winnings. As we were about to leave him, a frame of
bank, after work, came to the young man's house to receive trading lessons.

How many of these young people have embarked totally or part-time on trading? Difficult to
know, but their number is increasing, according to a trainer of a trading company since the blocking of
accounts. Former investors prefer to learn trading themselves so as not to be dependent on
societies that are in trouble with the law.
Hugues Richard Sama
Box 1
“They are entrepreneurs like the others”
(Dr Relwendé Sawadogo, economist, financial market specialist)
Teacher-researcher at the Burkinabè Institute of Arts and Crafts (IBAM) of the Joseph Ki-Zerbo University, the
Dr Relwendé Sawadogo believes that those who engage in trading are not very different from others
contractors. However, it warns of the many risks of the practice. To a good trader…
How would you define trading in easy French?
Trading, which derives from the English word trade (trade), is simply buying and selling securities
financial. It can be currencies (foreign currencies), bonds or stocks. In other
terms, it is a speculative activity on the financial market aimed at profiting from variations in the price of
Financial assets. Thus, trading is not fundamentally different from traditional trading. The only
difference is that it concerns financial products. Trading activity may relate to stock market indices
(for example BRVM 10, CAC40, Nasdaq), Forex (from the English Foreign exchange, to designate the market
or currency market), raw materials (gold, zinc, cocoa, coffee).
What are the risks associated with the practice?
In economics, we like to say that any profitable activity is risky and that the risk increases with the
profitability. Thus, trading being a speculative activity, it is also risky. Take the example of a
traditional commercial activity which consists of buying and reselling maize: the risk is linked to the
possibility of reselling the maize at a loss or of not being able to sell it. Trading in the financial market
no exception to this principle of the market. Imagine you buy dollars today and in two
month the price of the greenback drops against your currency: you would then have lost. Also, the products
developed to attract individuals present a financial risk and this risk is linked to the
market volatility. Indeed, imagine that we hide the real situation of a company and that you buy
shares or bonds of that company and some time later there is a leak of information. All those
who held the titles of the company will seek to get rid of them and ultimately you may not
be able to resell them. Therefore, you will not be able to regain possession of your investment.
To return to the context of Burkina, I think that trading is done more on the foreign exchange market which
involves buying and selling currencies. Transactions are made in currency pairs such as the pair
euro/dollar, dollar/yen, euro/pound sterling. So, you have to buy foreign currencies (dollar, euro, yen) in order to
to build your base currency before you can trade in the forex market. So you
You will agree with me that the risk is at several levels, hence the complexity of trading which requires
that you are specialists to avoid certain risks.
In theory, can you really become a millionaire in record time thanks to trading?
As you say in theory, I will answer in the affirmative, because trading is not, as I said before,
fundamentally different from traditional business activities. Therefore, we can become
millionaire through trading. In some developed countries such as France, the United States, Canada,
some people do well in life doing just that. However, we must be careful, because we
can lose everything overnight. You have certainly already heard of Jérôme Kerviel in
France and the English trader of Ghanaian origin Kweku Adoboli, who lost billions of euros to
their society.
Some young people in Burkina devote themselves to this practice, sometimes after dropping out of school. What about
do you think?
It is difficult to answer this question, because it is an activity like any other, and it is a choice that
is personal. They are no different from young people who drop out of school to get into
entrepreneurship. It's a lifestyle choice. However, before embarking on this activity, it would be wise to
know the ins and outs. I say this because people tend to convey
information that suits them and makes young people believe that you can't lose in trading, which is
false. If so, everyone would abandon other activities and only trade in developed countries. At this level, the State should play its role of raising awareness, because you can imagine the
consequences for the company in the event of significant losses.
What is Cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is a virtual currency and, unlike bills and coins, it has no form
physical. It is a currency that can only be used by those who hold the code. This code can be
password, fingerprint, etc. Thus, it plays the same role as traditional money,
such as making purchases and transfers. The best-known cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin (or
Litecoin) and Dash.
Is it more risky to trade on cryptocurrency than on other values such as Forex or
raw materials ?
In the financial market, information significantly influences the value of assets and, like the
cryptocurrency escapes the control of the States, it is more risky to trade on the latter. Currently,
in the financial market, the value of cryptocurrencies increases because investors trust them,
but the day when the doubt will settle, it will be a free fall on the market, and the losses will be enormous.
Thus, the most important risk of cryptocurrency is its volatility which is greater than that of
other financial assets. In addition to volatility, it is unclear which day financial institutions
organizations such as the IMF, international regulatory bodies, central banks will
begin to regulate or even ban its currencies. Finally, the last risk, which is not negligible, is
the destruction or failure of the electrical network. Indeed, cryptocurrencies are virtual, and the day the
central system will fail, there will be losses since the holders will be unable to make
transactions. In conclusion, it is riskier to invest everything in cryptocurrency, and it is wise to
diversify your portfolio to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Interview by
HRS
Box 2
Against all odds
Even if they are not clients of these companies who have had their accounts frozen, retail traders that
we met share the outrage and anger of some 50,000 investors today in
the disarray. “I have never seen a country where people are prevented from succeeding. Everyone is in shock
because apparently our authorities don't know anything about trading, while they are mostly
economists”, plagues a trader before mocking: “This is why continuing education is important. For
the moment, the setbacks of the companies and the mistrust of the financial police towards trading have not
impact on the activity of those who maraud in the financial market in a private capacity. They continue to
receive the fruits of their labor via online banking and transfers to their magnetic cards. Corn
on a daily basis, they also have to face the gaze of those around them who do not understand this choice of life. And it's
the same catchphrase: "It's easy money", as confirmed by a trader: "One of my aunts, when
she learned what I was doing as an activity, told me that I should look for the money with the sweat of my
forehead. These are outdated considerations. According to the parents, what is not physical is not
work,” he laments.
HRS