Alcatel-Lucent Brings Cloud Networking Technologies to Burkina Faso Alcatel-Lucent is to provide the government of Burkina Faso with cloud networking technology that will enable it to develop new digital public services, such as e-government, e-learning and e-health. Alcatel-Lucent will supply the West African nation with its NFV (Network Functions Virtualisation), Cloudband and IP platforms, which will be integrated into the ‘G-Cloud’ infrastructure to being built around virtualised network resources from cloud nodes in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital, and five provinces. Approximately 400 buildings in 13 regional urban centres will be connected through a 513 kilometre (km) fibre optic IP/MPLS wide area network. Backhaul will be provided by an 800 km fibre optic transmission system that will become part of Burkina Faso’s national fibre optics backbone.