The life and record
<strong>El Hadj Alidou Kouanda</strong> was a Burkinabè Muslim imam and farmer remembered for one of the most remarkable documented pilgrimage journeys preserved in the modern historical record of Islam in Burkina Faso.
By the time he was interviewed by *Sidwaya* in February 2001, Alidou Kouanda was more than sixty years old, worked as a farmer, and had served for years as the imam of **Cissin Natinga**, a neighborhood of Ouagadougou. His public testimony centered on the pilgrimage that had defined much of his early adult life.
At the age of **twenty**, Alidou set out from Ouagadougou for Mecca with his Qur’anic master, **El Hadj Abdouramane Raabo**. The journey began with only **225 CFA francs** between them and, by Alidou’s own account, with little financial means but considerable physical strength and religious conviction.
Their route carried them from **Ouagadougou through Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan** before they reached Mecca. The journey was not continuous. The two men stopped for long periods to work, recover their strength and finance the next stages. In **Lomé**, they remained for approximately two years, earning money by selling animal fodder.
The outward journey from Ouagadougou to Mecca lasted exactly **seven years and six months**.
Between Sudan and Mecca, they used a boat to cross the body of water separating the African route from the Arabian Peninsula. They arrived shortly before the month of fasting, remained through Ramadan, and then completed the required rites of the pilgrimage.
Their return followed broadly the same route in reverse. Once again, they stopped in the countries through which they passed and worked to obtain the money necessary to continue.
From the day they left Ouagadougou until the day they returned home, the complete journey lasted **eleven years and nine months**.
When asked what such an extraordinary sacrifice had brought him, Alidou's answer was simple: **divine grace**.
His account consistently interprets the journey through faith, endurance, sacrifice and trust in God rather than personal prestige. In later life, he remained deeply devoted to religious practice and described spending much of his day at the mosque in **prayer and reading the Qur’an**.
El Hadj Alidou Kouanda's testimony is historically significant because it preserves, in his own words, the reality of an era when West African Muslims could spend years crossing the continent to fulfill the Hajj. His journey demonstrates how pilgrimage, religious instruction, labor and trans-African mobility were intertwined.
The principal documentary source for this biography is the first-person interview conducted by **Sita Tarbagdo** and published by *Sidwaya* on **6 February 2001**, under the title **“El Hadj Alidou Kouanda : « Je suis allé à la Mecque à pieds... »”**, preserved by the **Collection Islam Afrique de l’Ouest / IWAC**.
Connection status: Institution. The museum states relationships only when a person-specific source or family authority supports them; a shared surname is not treated as genealogy.