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The Burkinabe economy is characterized by a structurally deficit trade balance. The main export products are gold, cotton, cashew nuts, zinc and sesame seeds. In order to balance imports and exports, actions must be taken to promote national production by strengthening the competitiveness of economic units. The promotion and development of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) seems to be a solution to the structural transformation of the Burkinabe economy. An economy that will now be anchored in the territory by valuing all the potentialities of which the country abounds. Thus, the SEZs are spaces endowed with a set of infrastructures and services which, combined with tax and customs incentives, offer favourable conditions for the growth of competitive companies for development in line with specific needs of populations. This article assesses the feasibility and impact of the establishment of an SEZ in Burkina Faso by analysing the criteria of these economic zones. According to the analyses, mines and agricultural products are resources that can be subject to special treatment in an SEZ. The cities of Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso and Dori, in view of the availability of infrastructures and their geographical positions, are authorized to host SEZs. This choice is made taking into account the availability of critical infrastructure such as electricity, water and transport. The establishment of SEZs in these cities will have a fairly significant impact on the flow of foreign direct investment, export earnings and the efficiency of the productive apparatus. This dynamism will lead to job creation and the strengthening of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between work and ecological transition by exploring ecological labour among neorurals, i.e., people who have left cities to live closer to nature in the countryside. In Diois, a mountainous area in south-eastern France where I did the fieldwork on which this paper is based, neorurals have been at the forefront of inventing more ecological ways of living for fifty years, but these solutions struggle to become mainstream. The article shows that under capitalism, ecological labour – defined as a human activity that goes into producing ecologically sustainable ways of living – struggles to become a job because it is labour-intensive and gets outcompeted by less ecological, technology-intensive alternatives. In contemporary France, ecological labour can become a "green job" only in the presence of superior purchasing power, otherwise it becomes unvalorised "reproductive" labour that limits the spread of ecological solutions. As long as the primary job-creation mechanism is built on two contradictory mechanisms – gains in labour productivity and strong local purchasing power – capitalist economies remain growth-addicted economies that upset ecosystems on an industrial scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]