Burkina Faso 2

Burkina Faso

Infighting developed between the right and left factions of the CSP. The leader of the leftists, Capt. Thomas Sankara, was appointed prime minister in January 1983, but subsequently arrested. Efforts to free him, directed by Capt. Blaise Compaoré, resulted in a military coup d’état on 4 August 1983.

The coup brought Sankara to power and his government began to implement a series of revolutionary programs which included mass-vaccinations, infrastructure improvements, the expansion of women’s rights, encouragement of domestic agricultural consumption and anti-desertification projects.

Burkina Faso 1984 – Present:

On 4 August 1984, on President Sankara’s initiative, the country’s name was changed from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso or land of the honest men; (the literal translation is land of the upright men.)

Sankara’s government formed the National Council for the Revolution (CNR), with Sankara as its president, and established popular Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). The Pioneers of the Revolution youth programmer was also established.

Burkina Faso 3
Pioneers of the Revolution

Sankara launched an ambitious socioeconomic program for change, one of the largest ever undertaken on the African continent. His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, his government denying all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies included a nationwide literacy campaign, land redistribution to peasants, railway and road construction and the outlawing of female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy.

Sankara pushed for agrarian self-sufficiency and promoted public health by vaccinating 2,500,000 children against meningitis, yellow fever, and measles. His national agenda also included planting over 10,000,000 trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel. Sankara called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities build schools with their own labor.

On 15 October 1987, Sankara, along with twelve other officials, was killed in a coup d’état organized by Blaise Compaoré, Sankara’s former colleague and Burkina Faso’s president until October 2014. A majority of Burkinabé citizens hold that France’s foreign ministry, the Quai d’Orsay, was behind Compaoré in organizing the coup.

Deterioration in relations with neighboring countries was one of the reasons given by Compaoré for the coup. Compaoré argued that Sankara had jeopardized foreign relations with the former colonial power France and neighboring Ivory Coast. Following the coup Compaoré immediately reversed the nationalizations, overturned nearly all of Sankara’s policies, returned the country back into the IMF fold, and ultimately spurned most of Sankara’s legacy. Following an alleged coup attempt in 1989, limited democratic reforms were introduced in 1990 by Compaoré. Under the new constitution, Compaoré was re-elected without opposition in 1991. In 1998 Compaoré won re-election in a landslide. In 2004, 13 people were tried for plotting a coup against President Compaoré and the coup’s alleged mastermind was sentenced to life imprisonment. As of 2014, Burkina Faso remained one of the least developed countries in the world.[42]

Starting on 28 October 2014 protesters began to march and demonstrate in Ouagadougou against President Blaise Compaoré who appeared ready to amend the constitution and extend his 27-year rule. On 30 October, some protesters set fire to the parliament and took over the national TV headquarters. Ouagadougou International Airport was closed and MPs suspended the vote on changing the constitution to allow Compaoré to stand for re-election in 2015. Later in the day, the military dissolved all government institutions and set a curfew.

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