Burkina Faso has not recovered as much as Niger. Sawadogo's story suggests one reason why. While villagers in Niger have gained control over their land, smallholders in Burkina still lease it, often for no charge, from landowners who can revoke the lease at the end of any term. To provide income for Burkina's cities, the central government let them annex and then sell land on their peripheries—without fairly compensating the people who already lived there. Sawadogo's village is a few miles away from Ouahigouya, a city of 64,000 people. Among the richest properties in Ouahigouya's newly annexed land was Sawadogo's forest, a storehouse of timber. Surveyors went through the property, slicing it into tenth-of-an-acre parcels marked by heavy stakes. As the original owner, Sawadogo will be allotted one parcel; his older children will also each receive land. Everything else will be sold off, probably next year. He watched helplessly as city officials pounded a stake in his bedroom floor. Another lot line cut through his father's grave. Today Yacouba Sawadogo is trying to find enough money to buy the forest in which he has invested his life. Because he has made the land so valuable, the price is impossibly high: about