Thomas Sankara Saw All of This — and Died for Saying So

You cannot tell this story without him, because the man Burkina Faso is honouring today is the man France helped kill. Thomas Sankara became leader of the country then called Upper Volta in 1983, and promptly renamed it Burkina Faso — “the Land of Upright People.” In four short years he became, and remains, the conscience of African self-reliance: a soldier-president who sold off the government’s Mercedes fleet and drove a humble Renault 5, cut his own salary, refused the trappings of power, vaccinated millions of children, planted ten million trees against the desert, advanced the rights of women further than almost any leader of his era, and told the world a truth it did not want to hear about debt and aid.

On 15 October 1987, Sankara was gunned down in a coup led by his own comrade, Blaise Compaoré — a coup widely understood to have served French and regional interests, after which Compaoré promptly restored warm relations with Paris and ruled for 27 years until a popular uprising swept him out in 2014. In 2022 a military court convicted Compaoré, in absentia, of Sankara’s murder. And in 2025, Sankara’s remains were reinterred in a mausoleum built on the very spot where he was killed. A martyr was brought home. His ideas had never left. Every step Burkina Faso has taken since is, in a sense, the completion of a sentence French bullets tried to cut short in 1987.

Africa Is Looking After Africa

Now let me name plainly what this is — and what it is not — because the old powers and their commentators will rush to misname it. The moment an African state expels a former coloniser and then signs trade or security deals with Russia, China, Türkiye or the Gulf, a tired phrase is reached for: “they have simply swapped one master for another.” I reject that framing entirely, and so should you. It is the last reflex of a mind that still cannot picture Africa as an actor with interests of its own, rather than a possession to be passed between owners.

This is the oldest principle of this institute, and I want to state it precisely so it is never mistaken: “neither East nor West” means Africa first. It does not mean shunning the world; it means meeting the world on our own terms, from a place of self-respect, with our own people’s interest as the only compass. Diversifying our partners is not the deepening of dependence — it is the end of it, for a nation that can choose among many is captive to none. The glory of this freedom will be measured by what it builds at home: the currency reclaimed, the people fed, the dignity restored — the fullness of Sankara’s vision. But the right to choose our friends, freely and without anyone’s permission, is not in doubt. It is the prize itself.

Finish the Sentence They Tried to Cut Short

My heart, I will not pretend to be neutral about the wound this story sits on. Françafrique was real. The stolen currency was real. The murdered leaders were real — Olympio, Sankara, and so many whose names we were taught to forget. For sixty years, “independence” was a costume the continent was made to wear over the same old chains, and an entire generation grew up believing that this half-freedom was the most Africa could ever hope for. So when a small, poor, brave country in the Sahel stands up and says no more — and means it — something ancient in me stands up too. This is the spirit of 1960 finally arriving sixty-six years after the flags.

And because I love this awakening, I want to see it through to its fullest meaning. Sankara’s standard was never merely to expel the foreigner — it was to build something glorious in his place. He fed his people from their own fields, vaccinated their children, freed their women, planted forests against the desert, and carried himself with a dignity no aid cheque could ever buy. That is the whole revolution, and the break with France is its proud first chapter. The cord is cut — good, and long overdue — and now comes the building: the self-reliant, prosperous, dignified Burkina Faso that France killed Sankara precisely to prevent. This generation, educated and clear-eyed, knows the difference between being handed a flag and taking a future.

So let this be our charge, across every border the colonisers drew. Reclaim the currency. Reclaim the minerals, the data, the land, the story — and then trade them with the whole world, freely, as equals, choosing our partners by our own interest and no one else’s permission. That is simply what grown nations do, and Africa is grown. Burkina Faso is looking after Burkina Faso — not looking West, not looking East, but looking at its own people and asking the only question that has ever mattered: what serves them? Let every African nation learn to ask it just as plainly. We are nobody’s colony and nobody’s client. We are a continent of free nations, choosing our own friends and our own future. Finish the sentence, my people — the one they tried to cut short in 1987. Pamberi neAfrica yakasununguka chaiyo — forward with an Africa that is truly free.