Sharjah24 – AFP: Burkina Faso's President Roch Marc Christian Kabore on Friday picked Lassina Zerbo, the former head of a top nuclear watchdog, as the new prime minister of the West African nation, a decree said.
The 58-year-old geophysicist is to take office amid rising popular discontent over deadly jihadist violence in the poverty-stricken country.
"The president ... decrees: Lassina Zerbo is named prime minister," government spokesman Stephane Wenceslas Sanou said, reading the decree on television.
A new cabinet line-up is expected in the coming days.
Zerbo was executive secretary of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) from 2013 until this summer.
He is relatively unknown to most Burkinabes, but has gained some recognition abroad for his efforts towards banning nuclear explosive testing.
In 2018, the American Association for the Advancement of Science handed him its Award for Science Diplomacy for "using his scientific expertise and leadership ability to... promote world peace".
But Zerbo faces a Herculean task as the new head of government in his home country.
He will take over from Joseph Dabire, whose resignation Kabore accepted on Wednesday as he sought to defuse public anger over the government's perceived inability to end deadly jihadist violence.
Jihadist attacks have grown increasingly regular and deadly in Burkina Faso since 2015, killing 2,000 people and displacing 1.4 million from their homes, especially in the north and east.
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