How to Check if a Company Is Registered in Burkina Faso

Before you pay a supplier, sign with a partner, or invest in a Burkinabè business, there is one check worth two minutes of your time: confirming the company is actually registered. A real company in Burkina Faso is recorded in the Fichier National du RCCM — the national commercial register under OHADA law — and you can verify it for free, by company name or by RCCM number. This guide shows you how, what a genuine record looks like, and how to spot a business that isn't what it claims to be.

Who keeps Burkina Faso's company register?

Burkina Faso's official company registrar is the Fichier National du RCCM — the *Registre du Commerce et du Crédit Mobilier*, the national commercial register. It sits under OHADA (the Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa), the uniform commercial law shared across 17 mostly Francophone African states, and is maintained locally through the Maison de l'Entreprise du Burkina Faso (MEBF). Every company, *groupement d'intérêt économique*, and sole trader operating legally in Burkina Faso is assigned an RCCM number and recorded there — its name, legal form, and registration are matters of public record.

How to search the Burkina Faso company register

1. Get the company's exact registered name or its RCCM number (the certificate, contract, or invoice usually shows one).
2. Search it on Fylings — type the name in the box and we check the Fichier National du RCCM live, so you're not limited to a stale cache.
3. Open the matching result to see the registered name, legal form, RCCM number, and the source and date the record was checked.
4. No match under that exact name? Try a shorter form of the name, or search the RCCM number instead. Still nothing — that's a red flag worth pausing on.

What a Burkina Faso company record shows

Burkina Faso's public RCCM search is deliberately lean — it confirms a company exists, what it's called, and its legal form, rather than dumping its full file. On Fylings, a Burkina Faso record shows:

• The registered (legal) name — the exact denomination on the RCCM register
• The RCCM number — the company's unique national registration identifier
• The legal form — e.g. SA, SARL, SAS, SNC, GIE, or *Entreprise Individuelle*
• Where published: the registered address, activity, and the people behind the business
• The source and date — every record is attributed to the Fichier National du RCCM, with the date it was checked

OHADA legal forms you'll see

Because Burkina Faso follows OHADA's uniform commercial law, its companies use the same set of legal forms as the rest of the OHADA zone. The form on a record tells you how the business is structured at a glance:

• SA — *Société Anonyme*, a public limited company, typically larger businesses with a board
• SARL — *Société à Responsabilité Limitée*, a limited-liability company, the most common form for SMEs
• SAS — *Société par Actions Simplifiée*, a flexible simplified joint-stock company
• GIE — *Groupement d'Intérêt Économique*, an economic interest grouping of existing businesses

There are others — SNC (general partnership) and *Entreprise Individuelle* (sole trader, with no separate legal personality) — but matching the form to how a business presents itself is a quick sanity check. A 'company' that's actually registered as an *Entreprise Individuelle* has no shareholders and no liability shield.

How to spot a company that isn't registered

Most problems aren't elaborate forgeries — they're businesses that simply never registered, or that use a name close to a real one. Watch for:

• No match on the register under the exact name or RCCM number they gave you — the single biggest signal.
• An RCCM number that doesn't resolve to the name on the document.
• A name that is suspiciously similar to a well-known company (an extra word or initial).
• A legal form that doesn't match how the business presents itself.
• Pressure to pay before you've had a chance to verify anything.

Checking directors and ownership in Burkina Faso

The RCCM's free search confirms a company's existence, form, and number. For a deeper view of who stands behind a business, Fylings surfaces the published RCCM fields, and where the register lists associates or managers we show them too — useful for due diligence before you commit. For an official certified extract, you can request one through the MEBF or the local *greffe*, or verify programmatically via the API.