Thomas Sankara

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (21 December 1949 – 15 October 1987) was a Burkinabé military officer, Marxist and Pan-Africanist revolutionary who, following his takeover in a coup, remained in power as the first President of Burkina Faso from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. He was also the 5th Prime Minister of Upper Volta from January to May 1983.

After Sankara was appointed Prime Minister of the Republic of Upper Volta in 1983, he had political disputes with the sitting government that resulted in his eventual imprisonment. While he was under house arrest, a group of revolutionaries seized power on his behalf in a popular coup later that year.

At the age of 33, Sankara became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta and launched an unprecedented series of social, ecological, and economic reforms that were part of what he referred to as the people's democratic revolution. In 1984, Sankara oversaw the renaming of the country as Burkina Faso ('land of the upright people'), and personally wrote its national anthem. His foreign policy was centered on what he called anti-imperialism and he rejected loans and capital from such organizations as the International Monetary Fund. However, he welcomed some foreign aid in an effort to boost the domestic economy, diversify the sources of assistance, and make Burkina Faso self-sufficient.

His domestic policies included famine prevention, agrarian expansion, land reform, and suspending rural poll taxes, as well as a nationwide literacy campaign and vaccination program to reduce meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Sankara's health programmes distributed millions of doses of vaccines to children across Burkina Faso. His government also focused on building schools, health centres, water reservoirs, and infrastructure projects. He combatted desertification of the Sahel by planting more than 10 million trees. Socially, his government enforced the prohibition of female circumcision, forced marriages, and polygamy. Sankara reinforced his populist image by ordering the sale of luxury vehicles and properties owned by the government in order to reduce costs. In addition, he banned what he considered the luxury of air conditioning in government offices and the homes of politicians. He established Cuban-inspired Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (Burkina Faso) purportedly to serve as a new foundation of society and promote popular mobilization. His Popular Revolutionary Tribunals prosecuted public officials charged with graft, political crimes and corruption, considering such elements of the state counter-revolutionaries. Amnesty International criticised his government for alleged human rights violations, such as arbitrary detentions of political opponents.

Sankara's revolutionary programmes and reforms for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa's poverty-stricken nations, and the president remained popular with a substantial majority of his country's citizens, as well as those outside Burkina Faso. Some of his policies alienated elements of the former ruling class, including tribal leaders — and the governments of France and its ally the Ivory Coast.

On 15 October 1987, Sankara was assassinated by troops led by Blaise Compaoré, who assumed leadership of the country shortly thereafter. Compaoré retained power until the 2014 Burkina Faso uprising. In 2021, he was formally charged by a military tribunal with the murder of Sankara and found guilty.

Thomas Sankara was born Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara on 21 December 1949 in Yako, French Upper Volta, as the third of ten children to Joseph and Marguerite Sankara. His father, Joseph Sankara, a gendarme, was of Silmi–Mossi heritage, while his mother, Marguerite Kinda, was of direct Mossi descent. He spent his early years in Gaoua, a town in the humid southwest to which his father was transferred as an auxiliary gendarme. As the son of one of the few African functionaries then employed by the colonial state, he enjoyed a relatively privileged position. The family lived in a brick house with the families of other gendarmes at the top of a hill overlooking the rest of Gaoua.

Sankara attended primary school at Bobo-Dioulasso. He applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and excelled in mathematics and French. He went to church often and, impressed with his energy and eagerness to learn, some of the priests encouraged Thomas to go on to seminary school once he finished primary school. Despite initially agreeing, he took the exam required for entry to the sixth grade in the secular educational system and passed. Thomas's decision to continue with his education at the nearest lycée, Ouezzin Coulibaly (named after a pre-independence nationalist), proved to be a turning point. He left his father's household to attend the lycée in Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's commercial centre. There, Sankara made close friends, including Fidèle Too, whom he later named a minister in his government, and Soumane Touré, who was in a more advanced class.