Africascop
Histoires d'économie solidaire
Denys Piningre
2002 - 53 min - DV Cam - Couleur - France

Shot in Burkina-Faso in 2002, "Africascop" tackles the question of an economy based on the cooperative principle (decision-sharing along the lines of "one person = one vote" and fair distribution of revenue) in one of the poorest countries in the world.
We hear the members of three cooperatives that have production and service activities installed in several towns in the country, Ouagadougou the capital, Po in the south and Bobo Dioulasso in the west. In the face of the damage caused by the policy of the international financial institutions, which opens the door to foreign investors, encourages the privatisation of public services and promotes exportable crops at the expense of subsistence crops, the cooperatives represent a fragile but rational alternative, which puts people back at the centre of the economy.