Stroke presents a huge burden globally and locally. Very few studies evaluated cognitive impairment following stroke in the Sub-Sahara Africa and none of such studies sought to evaluate the relationship between cognitive impairment and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). This study evaluates cognitive impairment in stroke survivors and examines its relationship with peripheral blood levels of BDNF. It is hypothesized that serum BDNF levels significantly correlate with cognitive impairment in a sub-population of the Sub-Saharan Africa. In this cross-sectional study, cognition was assessed in 47 stroke survivors and 35 normal subjects using the Mini mental state examination (MMSE). Blood sample was taken to determine serum BDNF concentrations using the BDNF ELISA kit. Ethical approval was obtained from the State Health Research Ethics Committee. The data, which were not normally distributed, were expressed as median (10th-90th percentiles) and analysed using non-parametric tests on SPSS statistics. The age of the stroke survivors and controls were 55.00 (38.8-62.0) and 50.00 (32.8-65.0) years, respectively, while the duration of stroke was 10 (2-45) months. The MMSE scores were 17.00 (6.0-27.2) and 24.00 (21.6-28.0) for the stroke survivors and controls, respectively, and were significantly different (U=270.50, P=0.001). Serum BDNF values for the stroke survivors and controls were 1.32 (0.43-1.56) ng/l and 2.067 (1.72-2.28) ng/l, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (U=108.00, P=0.001). About 78.7 % of the stroke survivors had mild or moderate cognitive impairment which had moderate positive relationship with serum BDNF levels (Kendall’s tau b=0.58, P=0.001). These data suggests that there was very high prevalence of cognitive impairment in the 10 months post-stroke period, which was not associated with socio-demographic factors in the subjects studied. The post-stroke cognitive impairment was associated with reduced brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the peripheral blood of stroke survivors.