ABSTRACT
Boutiourou has a territory of approximately 24 km and is composed of five Nuni cantons, one Mossi and one Fulani. The village territory shares borders with the villages of Dabiou to the south-southeast, Kouri to the northwest, Longa to the west, Taaga to the west-southwest and Mouna to the east-southeast, with which there are good relations. The population of Boutiourou numbered 77 people in 1975, 903 in 1985 and calculating from the number of homesteads, 1,126 in 1995. The Mossi form the majority of the population, with 71 compounds, followed by the Nuni with 16 compounds, and a small minority of Fulani with two encampments. The village of Boutiourou, meaning the ‘pancreas of the goat’, is estimated to be 400 years old. The first family to arrive was the Zio family who came from the village of Diona. Boutiourou has the second largest population of the case-study villages and has the second largest surface area covered by farmland.
