Burkina Faso's parliament has abolished the death penalty by adopting a new penal code that strikes it as a possible sentence.
Justice Minister Rene Bagoro said on Thursday that the revised document paves the way for "more credible, equitable, accessible and effective justice in the application of criminal law".
The death penalty was kept in the version of the criminal code adopted in 1996, but Burkina Faso has not imposed capital punishment recently.
At a rate of one or two countries a year, it will take fifty years to eliminate the death penalty. But this is how we change things: one country at a time.