Burkina Faso (BF) — internal licensing notes

Source research, 2026-09-11 — tier-1 check done, real official source found but not bulk-fetchable

Burkina Faso does have a real 5-digit postal code system (unlike several of its neighbours checked in this project) — confirmed via UPU's own addressing-format reference for Burkina Faso (upu.int/.../addressingUnit/bfaEn.pdf / bfaFr.pdf), which describes a real coding structure, not an absence of one.

The official source — La Poste Burkina Faso's own postcode site

codespostaux.laposte.bf — checked directly (2026-09-11): a real, official lookup tool ("RECHERCHE — Une commune" / "Un code postal"), run by the national postal operator. No bulk download, CSV export, or API found — one-address-at-a-time search only, no licence/terms statement found on the page either.

Why GeoNames is not a fallback here

download.geonames.org/export/zip/BF.zip returns a plain 404 — GeoNames has no coverage for Burkina Faso at all, so there is no fallback to check against; the official lookup tool above is the only real lead found.

Verdict

No build in this pass. A real official source exists but is lookup-only, not bulk-fetchable with what was checked. Systematically querying the lookup tool commune-by-commune was not attempted — it would need its own ToS/systematic-extraction review first (same class of diligence as the OSM/Nominatim gate elsewhere in this project), and no terms were found on the page to evaluate against. data_available unchanged (false). Worth a follow-up: contact La Poste Burkina Faso directly for a bulk export.

Re-check, 2026-09-15 — fresh search, conclusion unchanged

Re-ran source discovery from scratch (not just re-reading the above) per a request to conclusively confirm or overturn the 2026-09-11 verdict. Burkina Faso is explicitly NOT in the same category as no-postal-code countries (Bolivia/Ethiopia/Uganda/Libya/Zimbabwe) built as free locality directories in this repo — it has a real postal-code system, so a locality-only substitute would misrepresent the product and is out of scope regardless of what this re-check finds. Checked, this pass:

1. La Poste Burkina Faso, both domains (laposte.bf/code-postal/, laposte.bf/tag/code-postal/, codespostaux.laposte.bf/) — fetched directly again. All three are still one-address-at-a-time lookup forms ("QUE CHERCHEZ-VOUS — Une commune / Un code postal"). Pulled the raw HTML of codespostaux.laposte.bf via curl and inspected every <script> tag and inline JS for a fetch/XHR/API call: only jQuery, Bootstrap, and two local js/script.js / js/script1.js includes — no exposed JSON endpoint, no open-data link, no licence/ToS text. laposte.bf/tag/code-postal/ (a news/blog tag page) has no article announcing a bulk database, open-data initiative, or API — it only links back to the same lookup tool. Unchanged from the 2026-09-11 pass.
2. INSD (insd.bf) and Burkina Faso Open Data (burkinafaso.opendataforafrica.org) — the direct data-catalog page 403-blocked automated fetches, so searched around it instead. Found real published INSD datasets: "Fichier des localités RGPH 2019" (one file per region — Centre-Nord, Centre-Sud, Plateau-Central, Centre-Est, Est, Centre, Sud-Ouest, Nord, etc.), which are 2019 census locality files with province/commune/village population breakdowns. These are admin/population geography, not postal codes — no postcode field of any kind — and are irrelevant here twice over: they wouldn't answer the postal-code question even if usable, and per the task framing a locality-only build is explicitly ruled out for BF regardless. No postal/postcode dataset found on INSD or the Open Data for Africa mirror.
3. data.gov.bf — DNS no longer resolves (Could not resolve host via curl; ENOTFOUND via fetch tooling). The domain is dead despite a third-party portal registry (dataportals.org) still listing it as "active" — that listing is stale. No government open-data portal is reachable for Burkina Faso at present.
4. GeoNames, re-verified directly — download.geonames.org/export/zip/BF.zip still returns a plain HTTP 404 (confirmed via curl, not just a search engine snippet). Zero GeoNames coverage, unchanged.
5. UPU Universal POST*CODE® Database — a real bulk product exists, but it's commercial/NDA-gated and its free sample excludes Burkina Faso anyway. UPU's addressing-solutions page advertises a "world postcode database containing the postcodes of 192 member countries," access to which requires a contract + non-disclosure agreement + data-use declaration + rates (contact: postcode@upu.int) — the same out-of-scope category as GeoPostcodes' paid product (buying/relicensing a commercial competitor extract is not a source-discovery outcome). The page does offer genuinely free regional sample downloads, so the Africa sample (Africa.zip, v2026.1) was actually downloaded and inspected: it contains only 5 countries — Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Somalia — no Burkina Faso file at all. So even the free tier gives zero BF rows; the only route to real UPU coverage is the paid licence.
6. GitHub, re-checked — no dedicated Burkina Faso postcode repo found. zauberware/postal-codes-json-xml-csv (a common multi-country postcode collection referenced by search) has no BF.csv (confirmed 404 on the raw file). Notably, GeoPostcodes' own public country-metadata file (GeoPostcodes/gpc-data → GeoPC_Countries.csv) lists Burkina Faso's postal-code format field as -, i.e. even a commercial postal aggregator's own metadata doesn't recognize a standard BF postcode format for matching purposes — corroborating how thin real coverage is without going through UPU's official documentation.
7. Aggregators (postcodezip.com, codepostalmonde.com, geopostcodes.com) — postcodezip.com/fr/postal-burkina-faso loads and claims Burkina Faso data, but the page is dense with "Acheter"/"Buy"/"Price" language (paid product, not a free bulk download) and no licence is stated; not pursued further; the same provider was similarly discounted for other countries in this repo's diligence trail. codepostalmonde.com/burkina-faso/ 403-blocked both curl and WebFetch (bot-protected) — not worth further effort to bypass for a page that, even if reached, is an unlicensed scraped listing, not a source. geopostcodes.com remains the same paid commercial product noted in the 2026-09-11 pass.
8. Wikipedia (La_Poste_Burkina_Faso) — re-checked for any mention of a postal-code reform or open-data initiative. None found; article is purely organizational (est. 1997, formerly SONAPOST until 2018).

No new source clears the bar (bulk-downloadable, order-of-thousands- scale coverage matching BF's real postal system, freely or clearly licensed). The one new, concrete finding this pass — UPU's Universal POST*CODE® Database — is real and complete-scale, but is gated behind a commercial contract/NDA, the same out-of-scope category as GeoPostcodes, and its own free sample confirms zero Burkina Faso rows are available without that licence. Conclusion from 2026-09-11 stands unchanged: do not build. data_available remains false. datasets/bf/datapackage.yml was not touched.

Note for a future pass: the only real lead that would change this verdict is either (a) La Poste Burkina Faso agreeing to a direct bulk export (not attempted — no contact channel pursued this pass), or (b) budget/approval to license UPU's Universal POST*CODE® Database commercially, which is a business decision outside a source-discovery pass, not a technical gap.