![]() Thus, Sankara sought to eliminate Burkina Faso’s foreign debt and liberate the nation from French influence. His vision for Burkina Faso, however, was quite clear: he wanted to create the structural and cultural conditions that would allow the Burkinabè people to control their own projects, ambitions, and goals.įor Sankara, the main obstacles that had previously prevented Burkina Faso from achieving this goal were colonial legacies and reliance on loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other Western financial institutions. Thomas Sankara’s political ideology does not fall under a singular school of thought, though he is often characterized as a Pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist, communist, and anti-corruption crusader. Blaise Compaoré 2010 monochrome by Damien Halleux Radermecker is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 Blaise Compoaré led a military coup against Thomas Sankara in 1987 and was President of Burkina Faso until 2014. Because of this, many still revere him as a near-mythical hero and wonder what Burkina Faso, and the rest of Africa, would look like today if he had stayed in power and was able to realize his vision. Although Sankara was only in power for four years, he accomplished many noteworthy feats. Compaoré, who remained in power until 2014, led a corrupt and brutal regime that stunted Burkina Faso’s socio-economic growth, making the country one of the poorest in the world, with 40.1 per cent of the population living below the poverty line. In 1987, another military coup led by Blaise Compaoré, a loyal cabinet member and one of Sankara’s closest friends, ended in Sankara’s brutal murder. Unfortunately, however, Sankara’s bold and ambitious policies would ultimately lead to his demise, as many of the country’s elite came to resent his radical reforms. In 1984, Sankara boldly dropped the name Upper Volta ( a name given by the French ) and renamed the country “Burkina Faso,” - which translates to “ land of the upright people ” in Mòoré and Dioula, the two primary native languages of the country. ![]() Upon assuming office, Sankara, a young man filled with charisma and optimism, promised to transform Upper Volta, a former colony of France, into a self-sufficient nation that would not need to rely on Western countries for economic assistance. ![]() Thomas’ dissertation research has been supported by the SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship, GSAS International Travel Fellowship, the African Humanities Project and the Columbia History Department.In August 1983, a 33-year-old military captain named Thomas Sankara ascended to the position of President of the Republic of Upper Volta, a small landlocked West African state, after a successful military coup d’état. The project links a history of social work practice, an analysis of economic models that quantified households in the post-war period and a social history of experiences of such interventions. These efforts played a critical role in defining communities’ interactions and interpretations of governmental practice in the late-colonial and post-colonial period. His dissertation, entitled “Calibrating Childhood: Social Services, Social Sciences and Rural Families in Burkina Faso, 1950-1989,” examines the multifaceted interventions that surveyed children’s lives in Burkina Faso (Upper-Volta before 1984) from the 1950s to the 1980s. ![]() His research focuses on histories of childhood, gender, health and development in West Africa in the 20 th century. ![]() Thomas is a third-year doctoral student in African history. ![]()
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