Thomas Sankara

Based on Wikipedia: Thomas Sankara

The Revolutionary Who Changed Everything in Four Years

In October 1987, a 37-year-old president was gunned down by his own best friend. Thomas Sankara had ruled Burkina Faso for just four years, but in that brief window he had vaccinated millions of children, planted ten million trees, banned female genital cutting, and renamed his entire country. He called it "the land of upright people."

His killer, Blaise Compaoré, would rule for the next 27 years.

Sankara's story matters not because of how he died, but because of what he managed to do while alive. He proved something that many considered impossible: that one of the poorest countries on Earth could reject foreign loans, feed its own people, and begin building genuine independence from the global economic system. His approach had a name—delinking—and understanding it helps explain both why he was so beloved and why he was so dangerous to powerful interests.

A Gendarme's Son With Ideas Above His Station

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born on December 21, 1949, in Yako, a town in what was then called French Upper Volta. His father Joseph worked as a gendarme—a military policeman—for the colonial administration. This gave the family a modest but real advantage. They lived in a brick house on a hill, looking down on the rest of the town.

The priests who taught young Thomas thought he might make a good seminarian. He was bright, disciplined, and excellent at mathematics. But when the time came to choose his path, Sankara took the entrance exam for secular secondary school instead. He passed.

This was his first act of quiet rebellion. There would be many more.

At the lycée in Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's commercial center, Sankara made friendships that would shape his life. One classmate, Fidèle Too, would later serve in his cabinet. Another, Soumane Touré, introduced him to new ways of thinking about politics and power. Sankara also played guitar in a band called Tout-à-Coup Jazz, which translates roughly to "Suddenly Jazz." Music remained one of his great loves—he would eventually write Burkina Faso's national anthem himself.

Why Join the Military?

Sankara's parents wanted him to become a priest. He chose the army instead. This might seem strange for someone who would become a revolutionary, but in the Upper Volta of the 1960s, the military actually represented a progressive force.

The first president of independent Upper Volta, Maurice Yaméogo, had become deeply unpopular. Corrupt, authoritarian, and increasingly divorced from the needs of ordinary people, he was overthrown by the military in January 1966. Many young intellectuals saw the army as a potential counterweight to traditional chiefs and corrupt bureaucrats—an institution that might help modernize their impoverished country.

There was also a practical consideration. Military academy came with a scholarship. Sankara's family couldn't easily afford other forms of higher education.

At the military academy in Ouagadougou, Sankara encountered his first exposure to revolutionary ideas. The academic director, Adama Touré, was known for progressive views that he shared only in private. He invited a select group of promising students—Sankara among them—to informal discussions about imperialism, socialism, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, and liberation movements across Africa.

For the first time, Sankara was systematically introduced to a framework for understanding why his country was poor while others were rich.

Madagascar Changes Everything

In 1970, Sankara traveled to Madagascar for advanced military training at the academy in Antsirabe. He was twenty years old. Over the next three years, something fundamental shifted in his worldview.

The curriculum went beyond standard military subjects. Sankara studied agriculture—how to raise crop yields, how to improve farmers' lives. He read voraciously about history and military strategy. French leftist professors introduced him to critical perspectives on colonialism and capitalism.

Most importantly, he witnessed revolution firsthand. In 1971 and 1972, massive popular uprisings swept Madagascar, eventually toppling the government of Philibert Tsiranana. Sankara saw what ordinary people could accomplish when they organized and mobilized together.

It was during this period that he first read Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Their ideas would influence him for the rest of his life.

But Sankara wasn't simply a Marxist. He drew from many sources. The Bible and the Quran were among his favorite readings. The Egyptian economist Samir Amin became both an intellectual influence and a personal friend, introducing Sankara to concepts like "auto-centered development" and "delinking" from the global capitalist economy.

What Is Delinking?

To understand Sankara's revolution, you need to understand delinking.

The basic idea is this: poor countries are poor partly because they're integrated into a global economic system designed to benefit rich countries. They grow cash crops for export rather than food for their own people. They import manufactured goods rather than building their own industries. They take loans from international institutions that come with conditions requiring them to keep doing exactly these things.

Delinking doesn't mean total isolation. It means reorganizing your economy around meeting domestic needs first, rather than serving foreign markets. It means becoming self-sufficient in food before worrying about export earnings. It means developing local industries rather than depending on imports.

Samir Amin, who coined the term, argued that third-world countries needed to "delink" from global capitalism not as an end in itself, but as a precondition for genuine development. As long as poor countries remained dependent on rich ones for capital, technology, and markets, they would remain poor.

Sankara took this theory and tried to make it reality.

The Coup and the Revolution

Sankara's rise to power involved multiple coups—Upper Volta was a politically unstable place. In September 1981, he was appointed Minister of Information in a military government. He promptly distinguished himself by biking to work instead of driving, and by allowing newspapers to investigate government corruption.

He resigned in April 1982, declaring: "Misfortune to those who gag the people!"

After another coup in November 1982, he became Prime Minister. But his push for progressive reforms alarmed powerful interests. In May 1983, he was arrested—notably, just after a French diplomatic adviser visited the country.

His imprisonment proved to be a mistake by the government. It turned Sankara into a martyr and a symbol. On August 4, 1983, his friend Blaise Compaoré led yet another coup, this time on Sankara's behalf. At 33 years old, Thomas Sankara became president.

He called what followed the "Democratic and Popular Revolution."

Renaming a Nation

One year after taking power, Sankara renamed the country. Upper Volta—a name given by French colonizers referring to the northern course of the Volta River—became Burkina Faso.

The name combines words from the country's two major languages. "Burkina" comes from Mooré and means "upright" or "honest." "Faso" comes from Dyula and means "homeland" or "land." Together: the land of upright people.

This wasn't just symbolism. Sankara understood that colonialism had shaped how Africans thought about themselves. Changing the name was part of changing the mental framework, of building a new national identity rooted in dignity rather than subjugation.

He also designed a new flag and wrote a new national anthem called "Ditanyè"—a word that translates roughly as "anthem of victory."

The Council of the Revolution

Sankara didn't rule alone. He established the Council of the Revolution, or CNR (Conseil National de la Révolution), as the country's leadership body. It included both soldiers and civilians, all ordinary people rather than traditional elites.

The exact membership was kept secret for security reasons—only Sankara and his inner circle knew who all the members were. But the council met regularly to discuss major decisions. They voted on proposals. Sometimes they overruled Sankara himself.

This wasn't democracy in the Western liberal sense. There were no multiparty elections. But it was a form of collective leadership that distributed power more widely than a simple dictatorship would have.

Vaccines for Two Million Children

Sankara's first priorities were basic: food, housing, healthcare. His people desperately needed all three.

The vaccination campaign was astonishing in its ambition and its success. Between 1983 and 1985, his government vaccinated approximately two million children against polio, meningitis, and measles. In a country with a population of around eight million, this meant reaching a huge proportion of children in just two years.

The World Health Organization would later cite Burkina Faso's vaccination program as a model for other developing countries.

Infant mortality dropped dramatically. When Sankara took power, roughly 20.8 percent of children died before their fifth birthday—more than one in five. By the time he was killed, that figure had fallen to 14.5 percent. This was still tragically high by wealthy-country standards, but it represented tens of thousands of children who lived because of his policies.

His government was also the first in Africa to publicly acknowledge AIDS as a major threat and to begin organizing a response.

Ten Million Trees

Burkina Faso sits in the Sahel, the semi-arid band of land that stretches across Africa just south of the Sahara Desert. The region faces a constant threat: desertification, the process by which productive land turns to desert.

Overgrazing, deforestation, and climate change all contribute to this process. As trees disappear, soil erodes. As soil erodes, less vegetation can grow. As vegetation disappears, the desert advances. The cycle feeds on itself.

Sankara attacked this problem with characteristic ambition. He launched "The People's Harvest of Forest Nurseries," establishing 7,000 village nurseries and organizing the planting of more than ten million trees. Every major public event—weddings, official gatherings, community celebrations—became an occasion for tree planting.

This wasn't just environmentalism. Trees prevent erosion, hold water in the soil, provide food and fuel, and create cooler microclimates. Planting trees was part of making agriculture more sustainable and making Burkina Faso more self-sufficient.

Rails Without Foreign Aid

One of Sankara's most remarkable achievements was the construction of over 700 kilometers of railway—roughly 430 miles—built entirely without foreign money or technical assistance.

He called it "The Battle of the Rails."

The railway served practical purposes: it connected different regions of the country and facilitated manganese extraction from mines in the northeast. But it also served as a demonstration of what Burkinabè people could accomplish on their own.

This was delinking in action. Instead of taking loans from international institutions to pay foreign companies to build infrastructure, Sankara mobilized his own population. The work was done by Burkinabè workers using locally available materials. It took longer and was probably more difficult than hiring foreign contractors would have been. But when it was finished, Burkina Faso owed nothing to anyone.

Women's Liberation as Revolutionary Policy

Sankara was, by the standards of 1980s Africa, a radical feminist. And unlike many male politicians who pay lip service to women's equality, he actually implemented policies that transformed women's lives.

His government banned female genital cutting—what is sometimes euphemistically called "female circumcision." This practice, which involves removing part or all of the external female genitalia, was widespread across the Sahel. It causes severe pain, lifelong health complications, and frequently death. Sankara made it illegal.

He also banned forced marriages and polygamy—practices that kept women subordinate to fathers and husbands. Women were appointed to high positions in government. A special ministry for women's affairs was created.

In speeches, Sankara connected women's liberation to the broader revolutionary project. As long as half the population was subjugated, he argued, the country could never be truly free or develop to its potential.

"The revolution and women's liberation go together. We do not talk of women's emancipation as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the triumph of the revolution."

Living the Revolution

Sankara didn't just preach austerity—he practiced it in ways that made him legendary.

He refused to use air conditioning in his office, and banned it for other government officials as well. In the sweltering heat of the Sahel, this was no small sacrifice. But he argued that luxury for officials while ordinary people suffered was morally indefensible.

He ordered the sale of the government's fleet of Mercedes-Benz limousines. Officials would drive Renault 5s—the cheapest cars then available in Burkina Faso. His own salary was cut drastically. When he died, his personal possessions consisted of an old car, a refrigerator, a broken freezer, three guitars, and about $350 in savings.

He biked to work. He walked through markets talking to ordinary people. He showed up unannounced at government offices to check on whether officials were actually working.

This personal austerity wasn't just moral posturing. It was strategic. Sankara understood that revolutionary governments lose credibility when their leaders live like the old elites they replaced. By living simply, he maintained the trust of ordinary Burkinabè people and made it harder for opponents to paint him as just another corrupt African dictator.

Rejecting the IMF

In the 1980s, most African countries were trapped in debt crises. They had borrowed heavily from Western banks and international institutions during the 1970s, when commodity prices were high and interest rates were low. Then commodity prices crashed and interest rates soared. Countries found themselves unable to repay.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank stepped in with rescue loans—but with conditions. Countries had to implement "structural adjustment programs" that typically required cutting government spending, privatizing state enterprises, removing trade barriers, and devaluing currencies. The theory was that these free-market reforms would restore growth and enable debt repayment.

The reality was often devastating. Schools and hospitals were defunded. Food subsidies were eliminated. Local industries, unable to compete with imports, collapsed. Social spending was redirected to debt service.

Sankara refused to play this game.

In a famous speech to the Organization of African Unity in 1987, he called on African countries to collectively repudiate their debts. The debt, he argued, had been incurred by corrupt governments that hadn't represented their people. The money had often been stolen or wasted on prestige projects. Ordinary Africans shouldn't have to suffer to repay bankers who had knowingly lent to thieves.

"Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa. Each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave, of those who had been treacherous enough to put money in our countries with obligations for us to repay."

He called for African unity on this issue. If all African countries refused to pay together, he argued, the creditors would have no choice but to negotiate. If countries defaulted individually, they could be punished. But a collective refusal would be impossible to sanction.

No other African leader joined him.

Import Substitution

Instead of borrowing from abroad, Sankara pursued what economists call import substitution industrialization. The idea is simple: instead of importing goods from rich countries, produce them domestically.

Cotton provides a good example. Burkina Faso grew plenty of cotton, but it was exported raw to be processed in European textile factories. Burkinabè people then bought imported clothing made from their own cotton.

Sankara changed this. He promoted domestic textile manufacturing and encouraged—sometimes required—people to wear locally produced fabric. The iconic tunic he wore in public, the Faso Dan Fani (woven cloth of the fatherland), became a symbol of this policy.

Similar logic applied to food. Burkina Faso had long imported rice and grain from Europe, even though local farmers grew millet, sorghum, and other crops perfectly suited to the climate. Sankara promoted consumption of local food products instead.

These policies had costs. Domestic products were sometimes lower quality or more expensive than imports. But they also created local jobs, kept money circulating in the domestic economy, and reduced dependence on foreign suppliers.

The Literacy Campaign

When Sankara took power, roughly 90 percent of Burkinabè people couldn't read or write. This wasn't an accident—colonial education systems had been designed to produce a small class of French-speaking administrators, not a literate population.

Sankara launched an ambitious literacy campaign with a characteristically unconventional approach. After his assassination, the new government fired nearly 2,500 teachers who went on strike. In response, Sankara's supporters created the "Revolutionary Teachers" program, inviting anyone with a college degree to volunteer as a teacher. Volunteers received just ten days of training before starting to teach.

This sounds chaotic, and it probably was. But it also reflected Sankara's philosophy that perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good. Having imperfect teachers was better than having no teachers. Getting people reading at a basic level was more important than waiting to build an ideal education system.

The Dark Side

Sankara's government wasn't just idealistic volunteers and tree planting. It also had authoritarian elements that troubled human rights observers.

He established Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, modeled on Cuba's neighborhood watch committees. These local organizations were meant to mobilize popular participation and implement revolutionary policies at the grassroots level. But they also served as instruments of social control, monitoring the population and enforcing conformity.

Popular Revolutionary Tribunals prosecuted government officials charged with corruption and "counter-revolutionary" activities. The concept of counter-revolution is slippery—it can mean genuine sabotage, but it can also mean any criticism of the regime. These tribunals offered fewer procedural protections than regular courts.

Amnesty International criticized Sankara's government for arbitrary detentions of political opponents. Traditional chiefs and former officials who opposed his policies sometimes found themselves imprisoned without clear charges or fair trials.

Sankara's defenders argue that some coercion was necessary to overcome entrenched opposition to change. His critics counter that revolutionary enthusiasm doesn't justify trampling on basic rights. Both perspectives contain truth. The historical record shows a leader who achieved remarkable things while also cutting corners on civil liberties in ways that should trouble anyone who cares about human rights.

Making Enemies

Sankara's policies made him enemies—powerful ones.

Traditional chiefs lost power and privilege as land was redistributed and local committees took over functions that chiefs had controlled for generations. Some had genuine grievances about being marginalized. Others simply resented losing their status.

The former ruling class—bureaucrats, merchants, and professionals who had benefited from the old system—found their advantages eroding. Import substitution hurt businessmen who had profited from foreign trade. Austerity measures eliminated the perks that government jobs had traditionally offered.

Most dangerously, Sankara antagonized France. Burkina Faso's former colonial ruler still wielded enormous influence across West Africa through a web of military bases, economic arrangements, and political relationships known as Françafrique. Sankara's anti-imperialism, his rejection of French economic tutelage, and his support for revolutionary movements elsewhere in Africa all threatened French interests.

Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso's wealthy southern neighbor and France's closest ally in the region, was particularly hostile. President Félix Houphouët-Boigny saw Sankara as a threat to regional stability—which is to say, a threat to the existing order that kept Houphouët-Boigny in power.

October 15, 1987

The coup that killed Thomas Sankara was led by his closest friend and comrade, Blaise Compaoré.

The two had been inseparable. They had trained together, conspired together, and risen to power together. Compaoré had led the 1983 coup that made Sankara president. He had served as one of Sankara's most trusted lieutenants throughout the revolutionary period.

What happened between them remains partly mysterious. Some accounts suggest growing political differences—Compaoré wanted to moderate the revolution and reconcile with traditional elites, while Sankara remained committed to radical change. Others point to foreign influence, particularly from France and Ivory Coast, which had obvious motives to want Sankara removed.

On October 15, 1987, Sankara was meeting with advisers at the headquarters of the National Council of the Revolution when armed soldiers arrived. He reportedly told his colleagues to stay inside while he went out to confront the attackers alone, hoping to spare their lives.

He was shot dead along with twelve colleagues. He was 37 years old.

Compaoré took power and immediately began dismantling Sankara's revolution. Structural adjustment programs were implemented. Relations with France were restored. The revolutionary committees were dissolved. Business as usual returned to Burkina Faso.

The Long Aftermath

Blaise Compaoré ruled Burkina Faso for 27 years, until a popular uprising forced him to flee the country in 2014. He had spent those decades carefully avoiding any accountability for Sankara's murder, claiming variously that he wasn't present during the coup or that Sankara's death was accidental.

In 2021, a military tribunal finally convicted Compaoré—in absentia, since he remained in exile in Ivory Coast—of murdering Thomas Sankara. The verdict came 34 years after the assassination.

Throughout those decades, Sankara's legend only grew. His face appears on murals across Africa. Young activists invoke his name and his ideas. In an era when most African leaders are seen as corrupt, compliant with Western interests, and indifferent to their people's suffering, Sankara stands as proof that an alternative was possible.

The Meaning of Thomas Sankara

What do we make of a man who vaccinated two million children, planted ten million trees, banned female genital cutting, built railways without foreign aid, and was murdered by his best friend before he turned 40?

Sankara's admirers see him as proof that Africa's problems aren't inevitable—that with the right leadership and policies, even the poorest countries can make rapid progress. His detractors point to his authoritarian tendencies and argue that his model wasn't sustainable.

Both perspectives miss something important. Sankara wasn't killed because his policies failed. He was killed because they were succeeding.

A Burkina Faso that fed its own people, built its own infrastructure, and refused to be subordinate to France was a threat to the entire regional order. If Sankara's approach could work in one of the world's poorest countries, it might spread. Other leaders might start rejecting IMF loans and planting their own trees and wearing their own cloth.

This is the true meaning of delinking. It's not just an economic strategy. It's a threat to a global system that depends on poor countries remaining dependent. Sankara proved that delinking was possible. Powerful interests made sure his example wouldn't last long enough to inspire too many imitators.

He once said: "You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. It comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future."

Thomas Sankara invented a future—briefly. Then he was killed, and the old formulas returned. But the memory of what he accomplished in four years remains, a reminder that another world is possible, even if powerful forces work to prevent it from lasting.