Burkina Faso is a landlocked nation in Western Africa. It is a nation that ranked as low as 184th out of 191 countries on the 2021-2022 HDI Report from the United Nations Development Program, with about 40% of its population living under the poverty line.
It is a nation that has seen back-to-back military coups in 2022 alone and has been fighting Islamic Terrorism within the Sahel since at least the mid-2010s.
It is a nation that has many valuable natural resources such as gold, but whose people and government only receive a fraction of the billions in revenues and profits that come from gold mining, with transnational corporations pocketing the rest.
This tale of neo-colonialism has played out time and time again on the continent, but in the case of Burkina Faso, this tale could have been avoided. And it all had to do with their leader in the 1980s, the man who gave the nation its new name and who was fighting tooth and nail to improve the lives of his people, making sure that they earned every single cent of the wealth they were producing.
That man’s name was Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara.
Sankara was born on December 21st, 1949, to Mossi Roman Catholic parents, with his father Joseph being a gendarme in the town of Gaoua, back when the country was called Upper Volta. An excellent student throughout primary and secondary school, Sankara eventually joined the military in 1966 as an opportunity to gain a scholarship for higher education, and because the military was incredibly popular at the time.
While at the academy in Ouagadougou, he and his fellow trainees witnessed the ’66 coup led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana. As part of their education, all trainees were taught social sciences by civilian professors, one of them, who was also the academic director, was Adama Touré. Touré held incredibly progressive beliefs and selected bright students like Sankara to informally discuss socialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, international relations, and African liberation movements with them, and Sankara would later state that Touré’s discussions would be the first steps towards his radicalisation. What further set him down the path of radicalisation was when he went to Madagascar in 1970 to continue his studies at the Antsirabe academy. There, he was given the opportunity to read the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, history, and military strategy, while also studying agriculture, all of which would form the basis of his policies.
Beginning His Political Career
After graduating as a junior officer in 1973, Sankara would continue to rise in the ranks as a promising soldier and military leader, eventually earning positions in Saye Zerbo’s government in 1981 as Minister of Information but would resign in protest of Zerbo’s growing anti-labour practices in 1982.
In the same year, another coup was launched in November, with Major-Doctor Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo placing Sankara as the prime minister for roughly 4 months. During that time, Sankara demanded that Ouédraogo enact more progressive reforms, which would result in him and his allies getting arrested after the French government got involved. This would turn out to be a terrible decision, as Sankara’s popularity among the people and military personnel led to yet another coup that Sankara’s friend Blaise Compaoré organised.
Presidency
At the age of 33, Sankara was made president of Upper Volta on August 4th, 1983. Inspired by the likes of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Jerry Rawlings, Sankara set to establish himself as an anti-imperialist, anticorruption and Marxist-Leninist leader.
A year later, he would rename Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which stood for ‘the land of upright people’ in Mooré and Dyula, the two major languages of the country, while creating a new flag and national anthem. During Sankara’s presidency, he was determined to improve the quality of life of the Burkinabe people and managed to put forward many successful programmes that did so:
~ He launched a mass vaccination program against polio, measles, and meningitis, with 2 million people getting vaccinated between 1983- 85.
~ Burkina Faso was the first African nation to declare AIDS as a massive health threat.
~ He built brick factories to help build new homes to provide housing for the urban poor.
~ He was attempting to fight back against deforestation and launched the People’s Harvest Nurseries to supply villages with greeneries and help plant millions of trees.
~ Launched massive road and transport infrastructure projects that built up the railway system in the country and paved many of the road.
14.5% by 1987.
~ Was focused on increasing education and raising literacy rates. From 13% of people who could read in 1983 to 73% in 1987.
~ Heavily fought for women’s rights and improving their standing in society, allowing them to get jobs in the government and military, establishing maternity leave, and outlawing polygamy and female genital mutilation. ~ Created the nation’s first supermarket in Ouagadougou.
Additionally, Sankara was adamant about nationalising the gold mines and rejecting foreign aid and bank loans to prevent falling into the same debt trap that many other African nations fell into throughout the 70s and 80s, encouraging other African nations to refuse to pay back the already existing debt. After being asked why he refused foreign aid, Sankara was quoted as saying “He who feeds you, controls you”, again echoing his firm belief in turning Burkina Faso into a selfsufficient state.
Something else that Sankara focused on was his and his government’s own image. He had sold a lot of the ‘luxury items’ that the previous governments had accrued over the years, such as Mercedes cars, and replaced them with much cheaper vehicles. He did not want his image to be hung in people’s homes as other leaders at the time did because he believed that “There are seven million Thomas Sankaras”, yet another example of how he wanted to truly be a man of the people and not some paternalist or god-like figure that the average person would never relate to.
His Assassination
Sankara would, unfortunately, be murdered in a coup orchestrated by Blaise Compaoré, his former friend and ally. The reason he would later give was that Sankara’s actions had resulted in a grave economic downturn due to the strained relationships between Burkina Faso and France and the capitalist pro-French Ivory Coast, but many have speculated that Compaoré was assisted by the West who were fearful of Sankara’s growing power in West Africa. Compaoré would rule Burkina Faso for the next 27 years, undoing all Sankara’s nationalisation policies, as well as re-joining the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. His rule would be defined by his corruption and his brutality. He was overthrown in 2014 by mass protests and eventually convicted for his role in Sankara’s assassination, being sentenced to life in prison in absentia, as the French had helped him flee to the Ivory Coast.
His Legacy
Sankara is a widely beloved and respected figure within Burkina Faso and Western Africa to this day. Many scholars within Africa state that if his goal of erasing his nation’s debts and poverty without needing to rely on the assistance of foreign banks was successful, then Thomas Sankara would be considered a massive threat to neoliberal and colonial exploits in Africa, with many countries following his path. With how his overall policies aimed to help as many people be independent of the legacy of colonialism and his urge to build a union between all African states to help each other grow, as well as his own attitude and how he presented himself, it comes as no surprise that Thomas Sankara is to many the African Che Guevara.
Written by Stefanos Messios, Issue 11 Global History, Spring 2023.
Illustration by Jasmine Fry.
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