Africa

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Neocolonialism in Africa, from the IMF and the World Bank to the International Caucasian Court for Prosecuting Africans
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 17 Sep 2025


Samantha Power, author of "A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," US Ambassador to the UN, National Security Council Advisor to President Obama, USAID Administrator, and staunch advocate of "humanitarian" intervention to stop genocide.

These are remarks prepared for a 09/16/25 Covert Action webinar on Neocolonialism in Africa.

I’m honored to be invited to join P.D. Lawton, Jeremy Kuzmarov, Milton Allimadi, Jean-Marie Higiro, and Lawrence Freeman here. I know a bit about most everyone’s particular areas of expertise, but particularly those of Milton and Lawrence, so I’m sure we’ll be hitting a few of the same points.

First let me say that as an American, my reporting on Africa has always been meant to expose and explain the US foreign policy that has caused inestimable suffering and death on the continent.

I’m sure that Covert Action readers and listeners are all familiar with the imperial toolkit for creating dependence and enabling exploitation all over the continent.

The financial neocolonialism imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank keeps African nations trapped in perpetual debt peonage that resembles the mortgage crisis of 2008-2009 here in the US. Banks lend money to African nations as they did to homeowners here until they’re so deep in debt that they have to keep borrowing money just to pay the interest. Then, once African nations are in the most desperate straits, the IMF and/or World Bank will come in and insist that further lending be conditioned on austerity—cutting social services—and on opening their markets and institutions to foreign investment without protection for nascent local industries.

When nations can’t protect and/or subsidize local industries, they’re trapped in neocolonial extractive structures, exporting raw materials to the industrialized world at low prices and importing finished goods at high prices. Without industrialization, they can’t develop a complex division of labor, and the majority have to rely on subsistence farming.

There’s also the military neocolonialism represented by AFRICOM, the US Africa Command, and various other US/EU/NATO security operations promoted in the name of fighting the War on Terror. In most cases, the salaries paid to African soldiers are significantly higher than what they would otherwise earn, creating a military class that is invested in ongoing military collaboration. AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), the precursor to ATMIS (African Union Transition Mission in Somalia), is particularly known for having created a middle class in both Uganda and Burundi that would not want to see Somalia become stable and militarily sovereign.

Then, of course, there’s media and information neocolonialism in that the US trains and employs journalists all over Africa who will not criticize empire.

The NGO industrial complex creates another form of dependence for salaries, goods, and services. An example I’m familiar with is Somalia, where USAID often distributes food aid just as farmers are bringing their products to market, meaning they can’t sell them. Thomas Sankara famously said, “Where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat. The imported rice, maize, and millet; that is imperialism.”

Judicial neocolonialism

I’d particularly like to talk about the judicial neocolonialism by which international law, international courts, the “rules-based order,” and even the UN Genocide Convention are used to dominate Africa, and here I’d like to go back to the time, in 2010, when I first met my co-panelist here, CUNY professor and Black Star News Editor Milton Allimadi. We met, along with another group of anti-imperialist journalists, lawyers, and scholars, during the so-called 2010 Rwandan presidential election, when opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza was arrested and imprisoned for alleged genocide denial and for trying to run against military dictator Paul Kagame.

I say “so-called election” because it was just a staged ritual like those in other US protectorates, including Rwanda’s neighbors to the north and west, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Prior to that I had taken interest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as the DRC, whose vast resource wealth has led to so much bloodshed and plunder since the 1885 Berlin Conference made it Belgian King Leopold II’s personal property. I’m sure everyone here knows that Congolese were virtually enslaved to produce rubber for bicycles and cars and that their mineral wealth has been used to build weapons, power plants, and now cell phones, renewable energy tech, and every sort of gadgetry.

DRC also has vast swathes of arable land and huge oil and natural gas reserves in the lakes on its borders with Rwanda and Uganda. In 1982, a Congressional Budget Office document titled “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral” declared that Congo’s cobalt reserves were essential to US national security. Cobalt had become essential to manufacturing jet engines, including of course military jet engines, and two-thirds of the world’s cobalt is in the Katanga Copper Belt, which stretches from Congo’s southeast corner into northeastern Zambia.

Now, lo and behold, DRC has vast lithium reserves needed to make lithium-ion batteries. Everyone wants a piece of Congo, which inevitably has the resources required to manufacture whatever’s next.

This vast resource wealth and all the suffering it’s caused drew my attention to DRC and, for that matter, to Africa, then led to the moment, in 2010, when I met Milton.

I had begun to follow the presidential election in DRC’s eastern neighbor Rwanda, although before that I’d understood very little about Rwanda or Uganda, only that they were both US-backed aggressors in DRC, who had invaded and plundered the country’s resources for decades.

At that time a fellow member of our tiny but obstinate US Green Party asked me to see if I could figure out why a member of the Rwandan Green Party wasn’t being allowed to register his party and run for president. I made contact with that Rwandan Green, Frank Habineza, and eventually with the two other viable candidates, Bernard Ntaganda and Victoire Ingabire, all online.

I soon realized that Victoire Ingabire was mounting the most profound challenge to the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame’s regime because she was challenging the simplistic and deceptive, legally codified and enforced history of the Rwandan war and genocide that he has used to justify his rule in Rwanda and his invasion, occupation, and plunder of DRC for the past 30 years. That, and her credible electoral challenge, were so threatening that he had her arrested and imprisoned for eight years.

The late American lawyer Peter Erlinder, who had worked as a defense attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, traveled to Rwanda to defend Victoire Ingabire, and Kagame promptly had him arrested for genocide denial as well. In Peter’s defense of his client at the ICTR, he had argued, with some success, that there had been no conspiracy to commit genocide in Rwanda.

The US has backed President Kagame throughout the Rwandan war and genocide, and ever since he finally seized power in Kigali. Note that I said “war and genocide,” not simply “genocide,” because I find that many people don’t realize that the horrifying “100 days of genocide” were actually the conclusion of a four-year war that began when Rwandan President, then General, Paul Kagame invaded Rwanda from Uganda on October 1, 1990. That was two months after Iraq invaded Kuwait, during the military buildup prior to the US/EU/NATO’s Operation Desert Storm, also known as the Gulf War, which drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

The world was at the time so distracted by the hugely destructive aerial bombing campaign in the Gulf that one East African country’s invasion of another was barely news. I can’t even remember it registering with me at the time, though of course the “100 days of genocide” grabbed my attention, as it did the whole world’s, four years later. To many it seemed like this was a sudden explosion of tribal violence, the most central and deeply racist narrative used to explain war and conflict in Africa.

At the end of the war and genocide, the UN, backed by the US, created the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda to construct and reinforce that narrative about the genocide, namely, that demon Hutus plotted and viciously carried out the extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Tutsis in 100 days’ time. Again, the four-year war preceding the genocide, was unimportant in this narrative.

Only Hutus were indicted and tried, although the far more complex history has been researched and written by authors including Robin Philpot, Judi Rever, Justin Podhur, and David Peterson and the late Edward S. Herman, co-authors of The Poltiics of Genocide and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later. It’s a history that includes genocide against the Hutu, committed by Kagame’s advancing army and Kagame’s order to assassinate former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, panicking the population and triggering the genocide.

The simple story of the 100 days of primordial African tribal rage and the world’s failure to step in and stop it became the central narrative dominating the African Great Lakes Region, most specifically Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to this day. Even the recent DRC “peace agreement,” which was really about securing minerals for US corporations, referred to Rwanda’s “defensive measures” against genocidal forces still present in DRC.

It also became the narrative used to justify repeated US/EU/NATO “humanitarian interventions,” as in Libya and Syria. We were told that the West was morally compelled to bomb, decimate, and cause chaos in those nations to stop genocide.

The International Criminal Court indicted Muammar Gaddafi for genocide amidst outcry about “stopping the next Rwanda.”

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this, however, has been its persuasiveness in Africa itself in a kind of judicial neocolonialism.

The simplistic, Manichean Rwandan Genocide narrative, the tribal rage of demon Hutus slaughtering innocent Tutsis, is widely received, as is the idea that humanitarian intervention and International Criminal Court indictments are a solution to African problems.

Many, however, if not most, now refer to the ICC as the International Criminal Court for Prosecuting Africans.

https://blackagendareport.com/index.php ... g-africans

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Ethiopia inaugurates Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam as regional tensions with Egypt and Sudan persist

Ethiopia has officially opened the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Africa’s largest hydroelectric project, marking the end of a 14-year, USD 5 billion undertaking that has reshaped both the country’s energy ambitions and the geopolitics of the Nile Basin.

September 16, 2025 by Nicholas Mwangi


Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed inaugurating the GERD. Photo: Abiy Ahmed / X

Ethiopia has inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Africa’s largest hydroelectric project, in a move hailed at home as a triumph of self-reliance but viewed by Egypt and Sudan as a threat to their water security.

The USD 5 billion megaproject on the Blue Nile, one of the Nile’s two main tributaries just 14 kilometers (9 miles) from the Sudanese border, was opened on September 9. Stretching 1.8 kilometers wide and rising 145 meters tall, the GERD is designed to generate 5,150 megawatts (MW) of electricity, more than doubling Ethiopia’s existing capacity and rivaling major dams like the Aswan High Dam in Egypt or the Inga dams in DRC. Officials say the dam will not only address chronic domestic power shortages but also allow the export of surplus electricity, fueling industrialization and economic growth.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, presiding over the inauguration, hailed the project as both a national and continental achievement, saying, “The Renaissance Dam is a testament to Ethiopia’s resolve and a beacon for Africa’s future,” describing the dam as proof that African nations can undertake transformative projects without external dependency. He added that the facility will “provide clean energy, light up the region, and change the history of black people.”

ታላቁ የኢትዮጵያ ህዳሴ ግድብ – The Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam #PMOEthiopia pic.twitter.com/JsI3LilA5w

— Office of the Prime Minister – Ethiopia (@PMEthiopia) September 12, 2025

Ethiopia, home to more than 100 million people, has one of the fastest-growing populations in Africa but continues to face severe electricity shortages. Currently, nearly half of the population lacks reliable access to power. As of 2022-2023, about 55% of the population had access to electricity.

Regional tensions and stalled negotiations
Nevertheless, the dam’s completion has not come without controversy. The Blue Nile, one of the Nile’s two main tributaries flows north into Sudan and then into Egypt, which depends on the river for its freshwater. Both Cairo and Khartoum fear that GERD could threaten their water security, especially during drought years, if Ethiopia unilaterally controls the flow.

Years of negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan have failed to produce a legally binding agreement on how the dam will be filled and operated. Egypt, in particular, has accused Addis Ababa of unilateral actions that ignore downstream interests, while Ethiopia insists the project will not significantly harm its neighbors and is vital for its development.

Joint Egypt-Sudan statement
In a joint statement after consultations, the two countries said, “The consultations also addressed developments regarding the Ethiopian Dam. The two parties agreed that the Ethiopian Dam, in violation of international law, entails serious consequences for the two downstream states and represents a continuous threat to stability in the Eastern Nile Basin in accordance with international law, particularly with regard to the grave risks arising from Ethiopia’s unilateral steps to fill and operate the dam, as well as those related to dam safety, unregulated water discharges, and the handling of drought conditions.”

Adding that, “Ethiopia must revise its policy in the Eastern Nile Basin to restore cooperation among the basin countries. Both sides further affirmed that the issue of the Ethiopian Dam remains a matter among the three states (Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia) and rejected any attempts to involve other basin countries in this contentious issue.”

Ethiopian position
But, PM Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly said that there is no intention to affect the waterflow to the region, in 2020 he said “Ethiopia has absolutely no desire whatsoever to cause harm to Egypt nor to Sudan. But #Ethiopia does not want to live in darkness. Our light will only support them – not harm them. We will continue on our #GERD track with no harm to both countries.”

Adding in 2022 that the GERD will help Sudanese water infrastructure to be operated optimally as the water flow would be regulated.

“Egypt also benefits from water conservation at the GERD, instead of wastage of billions of cubic metres of water to evaporation and in downstream flood plains. The GERD also helps to prevent future spillage that overtops the Aswan Dam.” He reiterated the same on the inauguration of the dam in 2025.

The road ahead
The inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, as Ethiopian officials put it, is a milestone for Ethiopia’s development ambitions. While Addis Ababa celebrates the GERD as a transformative leap toward energy self-sufficiency and continental progress. The project was largely financed by Ethiopia itself, and a 2013 China loan of USD 1.2 billion. The downstream nations Egypt and Sudan continue to voice fears over water security and the broader geopolitical consequences of unilateral action. With negotiations stalled and mutual distrust lingering, it’s uncertain whether the three states can forge a cooperative and integrative framework to balance development with shared resources and regional stability.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/16/ ... n-persist/

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Ambassadors from Sahel countries arrived in Crimea
September 19, 1:09 PM



Another step has been taken toward Crimea's international recognition.
A delegation of ambassadors from the Sahel Union (Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso) arrived in Crimea.
During French rule, these countries ignored Crimea's accession to Russia. But after liberation from French rule, they have pursued sovereign policies, and now they can visit Crimea without embarrassment, having returned to their native haven.

Furthermore, these same countries are officially withdrawing from the Rome Statute and the ICC. They are no longer needed. Instead, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso will create their own regional human rights court. They had previously formed a three-way defensive alliance, completely abandoning reliance on the French-influenced ECOWAS.

The Union of Sahel countries, having decolonized and expelled the French, are demonstrating their desire to pursue a sovereign policy independent of the West and Western international institutions, particularly France. This would have been impossible without the assistance Russia provided them in their decolonization processes—first through the Wagner PMC and then through the Afrika Korps. And helping Russia with the international legitimization of Crimea is one of the grateful options available to the new military governments of these countries.

Furthermore, these countries now generally vote in favor of Russia at the UN and also consider Ukraine a state sponsor of terrorism.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10079541.html

Google Translator

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Congo Court to Rule on Joseph Kabila War Crimes Case

Congo’s High Military Court is set to rule Friday on the war crimes trial of former president Joseph Kabila, with prosecutors presenting new evidence alleging ties to the M23 rebellion.


The High Military Court in Kinshasa will issue its verdict Friday in Joseph Kabila’s war crimes trial. Photo: @UBGK12


September 19, 2025 Hour: 7:13 am

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s High Military Court will deliver its verdict Friday in the landmark war crimes trial of former president Joseph Kabila, after a one-week postponement to allow prosecutors to introduce new evidence.

The adjournment followed a request by state lawyers for more time to examine additional material, including witness statements and financial records that prosecutors claim trace funds from Kabila to the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group. Judges admitted the evidence, delaying the ruling to next week.

Kabila, who led the DRC from 2001 until 2019, faces charges of treason, complicity with M23, crimes against humanity, murder, rape, and corruption. The military auditor general has called for the death penalty.


A controversial element of the case centers on Kabila’s nationality. Prosecutors argue the treason charge should be reclassified as espionage, alleging he is of Rwandan origin.

Tried in absentia from exile, Kabila has dismissed all charges. In a video message posted on YouTube, he described the trial as “politically motivated” and accused the government of President Félix Tshisekedi of seeking to sideline him. “This trial has nothing to do with justice,” he said.

His supporters have echoed that position, calling the process a politically driven attempt to eliminate a major rival.

The proceedings reflect deeper divisions within Congolese politics. Since Kabila’s departure from office, Tshisekedi’s administration has revoked his presidential immunity, banned his political party, and seized his assets. Reports also suggest Kabila reentered the country through an area under M23 control.

The outcome of the trial—whether it results in conviction or exposes weaknesses in the judicial process—carries major implications for political stability in the DRC and for its continuing conflict with armed groups in the east.

The ruling is expected to be closely watched both inside and outside the country.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/congo-co ... imes-case/

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Lead corruption investigator removed, protestors arrested in Gambia

The arrest and bail release of Gambian anti-corruption activists has ignited concern over government repression. Their detention coincides with the controversial removal of Auditor General Momodou Ceesay, who resisted political interference in corruption investigations.

September 18, 2025 by Nicholas Mwangi


Police have arrested several members of the civil society group Gambians Against Looted Assets (GALA), including activist Alieu Bah. Photo: screenshot

Political tension is mounting in The Gambia following the arrest of four anti-corruption protesters and the controversial removal of the country’s auditor general. The government’s actions have been condemned as a major setback for democracy and accountability in the West African nation.

On September 15, 2025, the Gambian Police Force arrested several activists, including Alieu Bah and Kemo Fatty. They were detained after police stormed a peaceful gathering near the Auditor General’s office, where protesters had gathered to denounce government corruption and defend institutional integrity. A few hours later, a spokesperson of Gambians Against Looted Assets (GALA), Omar Saibo Camara, was also arrested.

Forced removal of the auditor general
The arrests came just days after a dramatic shake-up in the civil service.

On September 10, President Adama Barrow dismissed Auditor General Momodou Ceesay, who had been leading investigations into looted national assets, and reassigned him to the Ministry of Trade. Many people believe that by placing Ceesay in a ministerial position, the president effectively undermined the independence of the audit office, since ministers serve at the president’s discretion.

On principle, Ceesay refused to accept the reappointment, but the government says he initially accepted and then changed his decision. His stance led to a confrontation on September 13, when police forces reportedly invaded his office with the intention of forcefully removing him.

Gambians Against Looted Assets (GALA), in a statement said they had “credible information suggesting that this abrupt redeployment was intended to shield certain institutions, including the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA), from much-needed scrutiny. By moving the Auditor General into a ministerial role, the President effectively places him in a position where he can be dismissed at will, thereby undermining the independence of the auditing function.”

“It is worth recalling that since 2021, the government has refused to make public the auditor general’s reports on government institutions. If this latest decision is indeed an attempt to silence oversight and accountability, we strongly condemn it in its entirety.”

Violent crackdown on protest
On September 14, activists from GALA and their allies gathered outside the auditor general’s office to protest the dismissal, and give a press statement.

Further, in a statement, GALA condemned both the removal of the auditor general and the arrests of protestors:

“The forced removal of the Auditor General, a public servant committed to exposing corruption, represents a grave assault on institutional integrity. Equally disturbing is the treatment of young citizens who were tear-gassed, arrested without cause, and subjected to police brutality simply for exercising their constitutional rights.”

Broader implications
The arrests and reshuffle come amid rising frustration with the Barrow government, which swept to power in 2016 on promises of reform, transparency, and accountability after decades of authoritarian rule under Yahya Jammeh. Many Gambians now fear the country is sliding back into repression and impunity.

GALA has vowed to continue its campaign for transparency and accountability, urging Gambians to “stand up, speak out, and continue to protest peacefully until the Auditor General is reinstated and our comrades Alieu Bah, Omar Saibo Camara, and Kemo Fatty, and all those arrested are released unconditionally.” The activists were granted bail on September 17.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/18/ ... in-gambia/

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Gaza Is Not Rwanda: Its Suffering Should Not Perpetuate that of Congolese
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 24 Sep 2025


Many families have taken refuge at the Kanyaruchinya site for people displaced by fighting in DRC's North Kivu Province. UNICEF/Jospin Benekire, 2022

Likening the suffering of Gazans to that of Rwandan Tutsis perpetuates the narrative that has dominated the African Great Lakes Region for 30 years, allegedly justifying the sacrifice of millions of Congolese.

Since the Gaza Genocide began, many people have likened it to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and likened Gazans’ suffering to that of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994. Those making this comparison now include Navi Pillay, head of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, which last week concluded, in a 71-page report, that Israel is indeed guilty of genocide.

This conclusion is of course a good thing, long overdue, but the comparison is pernicious, no matter how well-intentioned. It perpetuates the narrative that has dominated the African Great Lakes Region for 30 years, allegedly justifying the sacrifice of millions of Congolese lives. Over and over, beginning with the 1996-1997 First Congo War, Rwanda has invaded, occupied, and plundered the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), using the Rwandan Genocide as its excuse.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame never stops saying that his forces have to hunt down Hutu militias in the Congolese jungle, to keep them from returning to Rwanda to commit another genocide. He repeats this like a broken record even as he denies his troops are in DRC.

Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was then Zaire, from October 1996 to May 1997, joining an alliance with a Congolese front that crossed the country to topple Mobutu Sese Seko, the aging dictator whom the West had installed after assassinating Patrice Lumumba. As a Newsweek analyst explained at the time, in “Washington’s Africa Move,” the US backed that alliance to displace France as the dominant power in the region and install Laurent Kabila.

Kabila not only proved insufficiently US-compliant but also told Rwandans that they could not remain in Congo as conquerors. The US then backed Rwanda and Uganda’s second invasion, starting the Second Congo War, which lasted from August 1998 to July 2003 and drew in all nine countries bordering DRC.

The Second Congo War ended with a peace treaty signed in 2003, but Rwanda and Uganda have continued to invade and occupy DRC ever since, and Rwanda now controls the capitals of Congo’s North and South Kivu Provinces. It often uses proxy militias—including the most recent, M23—but the presence of its own troops has also been documented in decades of UN reports. The 2024 and 2025 reports said that the numbers of Rwandan troops actually exceeded those of M23.

In 2007, the International Rescue Committee concluded that 5.4 million people had died in the conflict, mostly of consequent displacement, hardship, and disease, since 1998.

In 2010, the UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993 to 2003 concluded that Rwandan troops had massacred tens of thousands of innocent Hutu refugees in what a competent court would likely rule to be genocide.

Western government and media support have nevertheless kept Kagame and his Tutsi elite’s excuse alive, and now Navi Pillay is reinforcing it.

Navi Pillay, the ICTR, and the one-sided narrative

The infamous “100 days of genocide” that took place in Rwanda between April 6 and July 4, 1994, were the conclusion of the four-year Rwandan War that began when Paul Kagame, with US backing, led the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) invasion of Rwanda from Uganda on October 1, 1990.

As I have often explained here in Black Agenda Report, it was a far more complex story than the simple, Manichean tale told in Hotel Rwanda and constructed at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Yes, Rwandan Tutsis were massacred by Rwandan Hutu militias. Yes, the massacres fit the definition in the UN Convention on Genocide. However, Rwandan Hutus were also massacred by the advancing Rwandan Patriotic Army led by then General, now President, Paul Kagame. General Paul Kagame’s own Defense Chief, Kayumba Nyamwasa, testifies that Kagame ordered the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, sparking the genocide after four years of war and mass displacement.

As I have also previously explained, the US—the undisputed hegemon at the time—created and funded the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, like the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, to construct a useful imperial narrative. Only Hutus, those Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman called “unworthy victims,” were prosecuted. Tutsis were the “worthy victims” and not one was even indicted.

As a former Chief Prosecutor at the ICTR and chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, Navi Pillay is perfectly situated to promote the pernicious comparison between Gazans and Rwandan Tutsis.

Is she doing so intentionally in service to Rwanda? There’s no evidence of that, although it is worth noting that she was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights when the Commission produced the 2010 UN Mapping Report, and in that position, she stated that she thought it had been unfair to Rwanda.

Whatever her motivation, the comparison made by her and anyone else is a grave disservice to the long suffering Congolese.

https://blackagendareport.com/gaza-not- ... -congolese

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Nigeria’s oil workers resist monopolization by Africa’s richest man

After dominating sub-Saharan Africa’s cement production and cornering large portions of its market in sugar, salt, and packaging industries, the Nigerian multinational conglomerate Dangote Group is moving fast to monopolize fuel distribution.

September 23, 2025 by Pavan Kulkarni


Aliko Dangote and oil tanker trucks, Nigeria. Photo: Dangote

Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is locked in a conflict with the unionized workers and drivers of his Nigeria-based oil refinery. After violating an agreement with the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), signed earlier this month to end its strike, Dangote Refinery secured a court order on September 18, restraining the union from returning to strike for 7 days.

Operational since January 2024, the Dangote refinery is the largest on the continent, built at a cost of USD 20 billion on the outskirts of Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, by the Dangote Group.

After dominating sub-Saharan Africa’s cement production and cornering large portions of its market in sugar, salt, and packaging industries, the Nigerian multinational conglomerate is moving fast to take over the oil sector.

“This is not philanthropy, it is economic sabotage”
“The entire oil and gas Stakeholders were astounded and shocked” when Dangote announced in mid-June the import of 4,000 CNG tanker-trucks (subsequently raised to 10,000) to distribute gas to pumping stations and industrial units without any transportation charge.

“This is not philanthropy, it is economic sabotage,” NUPENG added in a statement. The union warns that the free distribution is “not a gift” but a “trap” to drive out competitors, and “monopolize distribution”, which, in the long run, will allow Dangote to charge extortionate prices from consumers.

The Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) has also sounded the alarm. Distributing fuel to stations free of transport charge is “not only unsustainable but is also a deliberate attempt to undermine and eliminate the thousands of independent transporters who form the backbone of Nigeria’s petroleum distribution network.”

Together, its members own over 30,000 trucks that supply gas to stations country-wide. They employ “thousands of drivers, assistants, and service providers” – many represented by NUPENG.

Before raising these concerns publicly, the leaders of NUPENG and NARTO had sought an audience with Aliko Dangote to seek clarifications on his plan.

He directed them to his cousin, Sayyu Dantata, the Managing Director (MD) of Dangote Group. Dantata told them that the Dangote “had resolved to have monopolistic control, not only of crude oil refining, but also distribution,” NUPENG maintains.

He went on to inform them that the drivers to be hired for imported trucks would not be allowed to join any existing union. Later on August 29, his company, MRS Oil Nigeria Plc, started hiring drivers for Dangote. Recruits were “forced to sign an undertaking not to belong to any existing union in the Oil and Gas Industry,” added NUPENG’s statement.

In defense of unionization rights, the NUPENG declared that it would go on a nationwide strike from September 8. “The revelations contained in NUPENG’s statement represent not just an attack on petroleum workers, but a full-blown declaration of war against the Nigerian working class, trade unionism, and the principle of Decent Work,” said the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), a national umbrella of trade unions with which NUPENG is affiliated.

“It must be realized that this is not the first complaint we are receiving against the Dangote Group. We have received several from other unions” in various sectors in which the Dangote group operates. “All of them verge on the same acts of impunity and unfair labor practices.”

It went on to explain, with an element of regret, that in the past, it had defended the multi-national “from complaints by workers of other African nations out of patriotic fervor.” NUPENG itself had welcomed its refinery.

“We did so in good faith, in expectation [that] it would create jobs, strengthen local capacity, and benefit the Nigerian people, under a conducive atmosphere for unions to thrive,” it clarified.

“But we have reached the point where remedial actions have become necessary,” the NLC added.”Instead of lowering costs for Nigerians, the Dangote monopoly exploits scarcity and control of distribution to raise prices, thereby deepening poverty and hardship.”

“This is not industrialization; it is economic sabotage. It is not nation-building; it is class robbery,” added its statement in support of NUPENG, calling on “the Nigerian people to see through the deception: this is not philanthropy” but “plunder … not development” but “dispossession”.

Continental solidarity
It went on to declare, “We will not hesitate to mobilize all workers across the length and breadth of this country for actions and solidarity necessary to protect our dignity and to defend Nigeria from the clutches of monopoly capital.”

In its statement in solidarity with NLC, “our sister labor center”, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) said that “the labor movement will not fold its arms while Dangote and its companies treat Nigerian workers as slaves in their own country.”

The African Regional Organization of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) added, “We are on red alert for continental mobilization against this persistent anti-union posture.”

The IndustriAll Global Union, which operates in 130 countries with 550 affiliates, including NUPENG, also declared “full solidarity”.

Support also came from employers in the downstream distribution. NARTO, representing owners of the trucks driven by NUPENG members, added that they would join in the strike action. So did the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), representing owners of fuel stations largely attended by NUPENG members.

Amid this build-up of cross-class, cross-sectoral momentum toward a strike, the name Direct Trucking Company Drivers Association (DTCDA) cropped up in the media on September 6. Claiming to speak on behalf of drivers, its spokespersons urged them to disregard the strike call by NUPENG’s Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) Branch.

DTDCA’s president, Enoch Kanawa, “is a lawyer, not a tanker driver,” NUPENG pointed out. A former executive secretary of NARTO, Kanawa had moved on in 2012 to serve Dantata’s MRS as a legal advisor, before returning to contest for NARTO’s presidency with his backing, but losing to NARTO’s current president.

Six years later, he is back again – this time to undermine the union with an association fronted by Dantata’s company, and allegedly housed in the official headquarters of MRS. However, DTDCA appears to have had little impact. The strike was “one hundred percent successful,” the union maintains.

The following day, the company came to the negotiating table for a reconciliation meeting at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Employment.

Representing Dangote as its MD, Dantata signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the union’s president, Williams Akporeha, and the Director of Trade Union Services and Industrial Relations, Amos Falonipe.

Its text states that Dangote’s “management agreed” in the meeting that it had refused “to allow their employees to be unionized by registered labor unions”. The MoU adds that “after exhaustive deliberations”, Dangote Group committed to allow the unionization rights of its employees, and “that the process of unionization shall commence immediately [on September 9] and be completed within two weeks,” ending September 22.

The Understanding, however, fell apart a day after signing when Dantata allegedly forced drivers who had long been members of NUPENG’s PTD branch to peel off the union stickers from their vehicles.

Subsequently, on September 11, when Dantata “instructed them to forcefully drive into Dangote Refinery to load”, NUPENG said that its “union officials stopped them from entering the Refinery to load because their trucks violated Union loading rules and regulations.”

As the union leaders held ground, Dantata allegedly “flew over them several times with his helicopter and then called the Navy of the Federal Republic” to intervene against this labor action on Africa’s west coast.

“We call on the Federal Government not to allow the Navy and other security agents being paid by the resources of this country to be used with impunity against the laws and people of this country,” the union added.

NUPENG placed all its “members on red alert for the resumption of the suspended nationwide industrial action” against Dangote. Facing another crippling work stoppage, the company approached the National Industrial Court in Abuja, securing an interim injunction on September 18, restraining NUPENG from resuming the strike.

In the meantime, Dangote has started its free-of-transport-cost fuel distribution last week, unleashing 1,000 CNG trucks for the purpose, with assurance that the remaining will also be set into motion this week.

NARTO is complaining that its “agreements with so many companies” are “at stake because a big brother is coming to supply directly to them,” laying the ground to what NUPENG warns will be a monopoly, which, in the long run, will result in higher costs to the consumers.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/23/ ... chest-man/

“Russia and China respect us”: Burkina Faso affirms Sahel geopolitics are based on partnership

Advisor to the Burkinabé Prime Minister refutes the idea that Sahel countries are exchanging French imperialism for another.

September 23, 2025 by Pedro Stropasolas


Man raises fist in front of the flag of Burkina Faso during a popular demonstration. Photo: Pedro Stropasolas/Brasil de Fato

The Thomas Sankara Memorial project – inaugurated in May this year at the site where the pan-Africanist leader was assassinated – is, for Luc Damiba, special advisor to the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, clear evidence that President Ibrahim Traoré is committed to continuing the 1983 revolution.

Damiba received Brasil de Fato at the site where Sankara fell, along with 12 of his companions, in a massacre orchestrated by his then-friend Blaise Compaoré with support from France, on October 15, 1987.

Analyzing the country’s current situation, the advisor says he values ​​the efforts of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) countries in combating terrorism in the region. The “revolutionary entity” that brings together Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger has led the project of rupture against French and US neocolonialism since its creation on September 16, 2023. He concludes: “We are winning the war.”

In the conversation, Damiba also discusses Burkina Faso’s relationship with BRICS countries, such as China and Russia. He argues that these are partnerships, an “exercise of sovereignty”, rejecting the idea propagated in Western media that the Sahel countries are simply trading one imperialism for another.

“What Russia does, France didn’t do. That makes a big difference. Russia and China respect us. And, in any case, we’re mature enough to know how to say ‘no’ when we perceive that China or Russia are being imperialist against us. We’re mature,” explains Damiba.

A member of the Thomas Sankara Memorial’s coordination team, Damiba also emphasizes the importance of the country’s main agricultural development program, launched by Traoré, the Agricultural Offensive, which has ensured security, food self-sufficiency, and political engagement for peasants. “We can only count on the rural world to make the revolution,” he says.

Check out the full interview:

Brasil de Fato: Many people today say that Ibrahim Traoré is the “reincarnation” of Thomas Sankara. What do you think?

Luc Damiba: In fact, there were two acts that he (Traoré) performed at this specific place, the memorial, that make him the reincarnation of Thomas Sankara. One: when he assumed power on October 14th, a day later, on October 15th, 2022, he came here, assumed leadership of the revolution, and said he would continue the revolution that Sankara had started.

Therefore, it is the continuity of the revolution that is present today. Secondly, he agreed to build this mausoleum project in the name of Thomas Sankara. He rehabilitated the memory of Thomas Sankara. So, every day, he quotes his quotes, his memory, his references, the work he accomplished, and says he will do better. Because in our country, there is a saying that shames anyone who doesn’t do better than their father. Sankara is the father of the revolution. Ibrahim Traoré is the son, and therefore, he must do better than Sankara.

BdF: For people in Brazil who don’t know what’s happening in the Sahel, don’t know what this is, can you explain to us a little about what this revolution is and what the role of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) is?

LD: The AES was created because there is a war going on, a war in which terrorists fight the populations in the bases, in the jungles, and often in the cities. And, in fighting the terrorists, we realize that they are armed and financed by imperialism. Therefore, currently, the country as a whole is fighting. It is a war of national liberation, a war of true independence. And Ibrahim Traoré, Chiani (Niger), and Goïta (Mali) are the three leaders leading this war of liberation for the three countries.

Therefore, the AES constitutes itself as a revolutionary entity that strives daily to free itself from the clutches of monetary, financial, infrastructural, ideological, and other imperialism. What we must understand is that this is not a civil war, not a simple terrorist war; it is a war against imperialism and a war for the autonomy, liberation, and independence of our countries.

BdF: And what is the security situation in the country today, almost 3 years after Traoré came to power?

LD: Burkina Faso is safer today. We have more security today than we did before Traoré. You could say that because before Traoré, 50 km from Ouagadougou, it was difficult. Now, with Traoré, we can go beyond that. There were villages that were occupied. Today, many villages are liberated. So, I think these are essential points that we need to understand. They are visible signs that we can see.

Today, many cities are liberated, and security is gradually returning. There are still attacks, and not everything is clear yet, but we are progressing toward ending the war throughout the region, not just in Burkina Faso. This is no longer a war just for Burkina Faso, it’s a war in all the AES countries.


For Luc Damiba, peasants are the main political actors in the “march of revolution.” Photo: Pedro Stropasolas/Brasil de Fato

BdF: You’ve said before, that peasants are the main political force in Burkina Faso. Can you explain that a bit?

LD: The first thing a man wants is to eat. To eat morning, noon, and night. And so he (Traoré) launched the Agricultural Offensive. We have beautiful land, we have water everywhere, we have some rain, it’s true, but we need to reorganize all of this to produce enough food for the citizens, and that’s a strength. And since peasants are the most numerous in Burkina Faso, 90% of the population lives in rural areas, so we need to occupy them, we need to occupy them well. If we don’t occupy them, they will be occupied by terrorists. That’s the first gain we have.

The second benefit is that they will produce enough to achieve food self-sufficiency. The third benefit is that we will have political actors well-prepared for the march of the revolution. If we don’t have the peasants to carry out the revolution, we will fail.

Therefore, it is very important to first achieve the agricultural revolution. Then, we will have the other links in society that will join in: university intellectuals or those who went to school but are not revolutionaries.

The bourgeoisie, when an opportunity arises, switches to imperialism because they are very pro-imperialism. Therefore, you can’t count on intellectuals; you can only count on the rural world to make the revolution, and Traoré started well, with this offensive agricultural policy, mobilizing this world, which is an important political actor.

BdF: And regarding partnerships with China and Russia, how do you see this relationship?

LD: It’s a mutually beneficial partnership. China provides us with resources, just as Russia provides us with resources – weapons and machinery – but we buy them, we buy them outright. We move forward together.

BdF: Many people unfamiliar with the Sahelian process have been spreading the Western narrative that the Sahelian countries are swapping French imperialism for Russian and Chinese imperialism. What’s your take on this narrative ?

LD: That’s not true. First of all, it’s what China does, what Russia does, France didn’t do. This makes a big difference. Russia and China respect us. And, in any case, we are mature enough to know how to say no when we perceive that China or Russia are being imperialist.

Therefore, we are mature. When someone is grown up, they can talk to whomever they want, and that is our sovereign choice. We choose who we do business with, who we deal with on this and that. We are free. All free nations are free to decide who they will do business with.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/23/ ... rtnership/

[blindpig]

Niger Defends Sahel Sovereignty, Calls Out French Colonialism at UNGA
Posted by Internationalist 360° on September 30, 2025
Nicholas Mwangi


Niger PM speaks at 80th UNGA. Photo: UN


Niger’s Prime Minister Lamine Zeine used the UNGA stage to deliver a fiery defense of Sahel sovereignty, calling out France for backing terrorist activities and waging economic war against his country.

At the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York, Lamine Zeine Ali Mahaman, prime minister of Niger’s Transition Government, delivered a defiant and historic speech that laid bare the aspirations of the Sahel alliance and accused France of orchestrating decades of destabilization in the region.

Zeine began by aligning Niger with the statement delivered the previous day by Malian Prime Minister Abdullah Maïga, who also spoke on behalf of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – the political, economic, and defense alliance formed by Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso in 2023 after they severed ties with ECOWAS. “He forcefully expressed the aspirations of our alliance and our people, with full respect for our sovereignty, the defense of our interests, and genuine cooperation with all countries enamored of peace and justice,” Zeine affirmed.

A Sahelian tradition of unity and solidarity

In the opening section of his address, Zeine reminded the world that Niger and the broader Sahel have long histories of peaceful coexistence. He evoked the ties between diverse communities, Hausa, Zarma, Fulani, Tuareg, Kanuri, Tubu, Arabs, Buduma, who through centuries of intermarriage, kinship, and shared survival in a harsh climate forged deep bonds of solidarity.

“Our people understood very quickly that sticking together, expressing solidarity, is not an option. It was a precondition for their very survival,” he declared, linking this cultural inheritance to the contemporary Sahelian project of regional sovereignty and collective defense.

Condemnation of global double standards

The prime minister sharply criticized the indifference of the international community toward wars and crises in Africa while denouncing Israeli genocide in Gaza and aggression against Iran and Qatar. He also cited ongoing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and across the Sahel, arguing that silence and complicity from powerful nations contribute to instability.

He accused certain states of weaponizing disinformation campaigns, financing terrorism, and sowing ethnic conflict as part of a broader strategy to destabilize the region. “This is the reality that my country and the Confederation of Sahel States are facing as we combat imported terrorism backed by sponsors,” he stressed.

Calling out France

The most striking part of Zeine’s speech was his direct calling out of France, Niger’s former colonial power, whose neo-colonial meddling has been a driving factor of the uprisings across the Sahel. He accused Paris of:

Training, arming, and funding terrorist groups after its military expulsion from Niger in 2023.
Running disinformation campaigns to discredit Niger’s institutions and leadership.
Fueling inter-ethnic tensions and sowing discord with neighboring states.
Waging an “economic and financial war” by blocking investment and lobbying international financial institutions against Niger.
Zeine went further, demanding that France acknowledge and atone for its colonial crimes. He recalled massacres committed during France’s violent conquest of Niger in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from Zinder to Tessawa, where women, children, and entire villages were exterminated.

“In November 2021 in Téra, young demonstrators were assassinated by the French army. And just this year, in March 2025, 44 Muslims were executed in cold blood at Friday prayers. These crimes remind us of those committed ever since 1899,” he said, calling France’s role “abject terrorism behind which it hides.”

He announced that Niger’s transitional authorities had set up a commission of historians and scientists to “rewrite the true history of our country, to reclaim ownership of our history, and to give back to our great nation its dignity.”

Resource sovereignty and economic reforms

Zeine used the global platform to underline Niger’s reclamation of sovereignty over its uranium resources, which for decades supplied France’s nuclear industry while leaving Nigeriens in poverty and environmental devastation. Since July 2023, the ruling National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) has expelled French companies and sought new partnerships with Russia, China, and Turkey.

Despite sanctions and economic blockades, Zeine highlighted progress:

Inflation reduced to -0.1% by August 2025.
Projected GDP growth of 7% between 2025–2028.
Reduction of the budget deficit from 5.4% in 2023 to a projected 3% in 2025.
Social measures, including lower fuel prices, cheaper school fees, and reduced medical costs.
For the first time, he said, Niger did not experience a “lean season” of food shortages thanks to large-scale irrigation and agroecology programs. “Our ambition is food sovereignty. We will no longer need to ask for support to feed our people,” he declared.

Building the Sahel Confederation

Zeine situated Niger’s transformation within the broader project of the Alliance/Confederation of Sahel States (AES), which is rapidly becoming both a political and military bloc. He framed this as a decisive step in breaking dependency on Western powers and building new forms of solidarity based on “ancestral values, sovereignty, and justice.”

“We will defend our countries to ensure our survival. We will defend our territory and our people,” he vowed, noting that the Sahel fight against terrorism is not only for regional stability but also “for the stability of the entire world.”

Closing his address, Zeine criticized the United Nations as “powerless, hampered by the veto of Western powers.” He called for structural reforms to make the UN Security Council more representative, granting Africa a meaningful role in global decision-making.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/09/ ... m-at-unga/

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The Sahel Alliance, the never-ending story of a struggle for a free Africa

Lorenzo Maria Pacini

September 30, 2025

Full and effective independence, with sovereignty and autonomy, is possible, but it is still a work in progress.

Leading the way to a better future

A word of advice: keep your eyes on what is happening in the Sahel. And, above all, do not ignore the underlying reasons and the ways in which Africa is now rising again thanks to the Alliance of Sahel States.

Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are three contiguous, landlocked states that occupy a huge swath of territory straddling the southern Sahara and the Sudano-Sahelian region. Together, they account for almost half of West Africa’s total area—about 45%—and about 17% of its population, with a combined total of over 73 million inhabitants (26.2 million in Niger, 23.8 million in Mali, and 23 million in Burkina Faso). These figures alone demonstrate the demographic and geographic weight of the Sahelian triad.

The societies of these countries share strong common traits, the result of centuries of cultural and commercial exchanges and geographical proximity that has fostered the sharing of social norms and practices, cultures still largely based on community values, oral tradition as the preferred means of transmitting knowledge, predominantly agricultural economies, and social structures strongly influenced by religion, which shapes people’s lives in a vertical openness to existence.

Like the rest of West Africa, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso experienced all the contradictions of French colonial rule in the 20th century, contradictions that exploded in a dramatic fashion during World War II. The official European narrative rarely mentions that a significant proportion of the soldiers and laborers employed to liberate Europe from Nazism came from the French colonies in West Africa, including present-day Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Thousands of Africans fought and died on European soil, and their war experience fueled a new political consciousness that paved the way for demands for equality and self-determination.

The first anti-colonial organizations

It was after World War II, in a context of attempts to establish socialism in Africa, that anti-colonial movements took hold and achieved significant successes.

Let’s proceed in historical stages. In Niger, the Nigerien Progressive Party was founded in 1946, affiliated with the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, a large pan-African and anti-colonial coalition led by figures such as Modibo Keïta in Mali and Ahmed Sékou Touré in Guinea. The RDA began by demanding equal rights with French citizens, but within a few years it moved to a position of total break with the colonial system.

In Burkina Faso, the Voltaic Union joined the RDA to build a common front for liberation on a regional scale. Socialism in Burkina Faso took on a particular connotation during the presidency of Thomas Sankara, who transformed the then Upper Volta into Burkina Faso, ‘the land of honest men’. His vision, inspired by Marxism-Leninism but deeply adapted to the African context, aimed at a model of autonomous development based on social justice, popular participation, and economic independence from colonial powers and international financial institutions.

Sankara launched a vast program of reforms that included land redistribution, the promotion of subsistence agriculture, and mass literacy. Thousands of schools, wells, and health centers were built in rural areas with the aim of reducing inequalities between cities and the countryside. His policy encouraged the role of women, abolishing oppressive traditional practices and promoting their active integration into the economic and political life of the country.

Burkinabe socialism differed from the Soviet model in its strong community roots and focus on self-sufficiency. It openly criticized foreign debt, considering it a mechanism of neocolonial subjugation, and rejected the personal enrichment of leaders. Sankare’s leadership was austere and charismatic, as he sought to build a sense of national identity and solidarity among citizens at a time of great difficulty for the African peoples of the Sahel.

Despite significant achievements in terms of social and infrastructural development, Burkina Faso’s socialist project met with internal and external resistance. A lack of resources, international isolation, and conflicts with local elites led to growing tensions, culminating in the 1987 coup d’état in which Sankara was assassinated.

Immediately afterwards, Blaise Compaoré took power, ushering in a thirty-year period characterized by a gradual abandonment of socialist policies. The new regime sought to normalize relations with Western powers and international financial institutions, liberalizing the economy and reducing the scope of Sankara’s popular reforms. This transition generated growing disillusionment among citizens, as promises of inclusive development and social justice gave way to corruption, inequality, and instability.

In 2014, a popular movement forced Compaoré to resign, ushering in a period of political uncertainty with weak civilian governments unable to respond to rising insecurity, exacerbated by the spread of jihadist groups in the Sahel. Subsequent presidents, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré and Paul-Henri Damiba, failed to stabilize the country or resume the path of social development, fueling discontent.

In this context of crisis, the military leader Ibrahim Traoré seized power in a coup d’état in September 2022, reviving Sankara’s socialist and independence dream and becoming a beacon for all oppressed peoples around the world.

The international situation had accelerated this process, especially due to the political presence of France and the UK. France’s heavy defeat in Indochina in 1954 and the intensification of the war in Algeria, which lasted until 1962, reduced Paris’s ability to maintain control over its colonies. Charles de Gaulle attempted to preserve at least part of the empire by offering a compromise: in 1958, he called a referendum on the new Constitution of the Fifth Republic. The African territories were offered two options: vote ‘yes’ to remain in the French-African Community, keeping the centers of power under French influence, or vote ‘no’ for immediate independence, but risking political rupture and economic isolation.

Djibo Bakary—founder of the Sawaba party (which means “freedom” in the Hausa language) and head of government after the 1957 elections—led the “no” campaign. Only Sékou Touré’s Guinea really managed to reject De Gaulle’s offer, gaining immediate independence in 1958 as the first French colony in West Africa.

Leaders in favor of breaking away were often subjected to internal repression, fueled by cooperation between colonial officials, traditional leaders, and the new African “évoluée” elite educated in French schools and destined to perpetuate the existing order. De Gaulle sent a new governor, Don Jean Colombani, who mobilized the entire administrative and security apparatus to sabotage the referendum and weaken the Sawaba, which was also opposed to French exploitation of Nigerien uranium. The “yes” vote officially prevailed thanks to massive electoral manipulation.

Nevertheless, Guinea’s victory in 1958, following the independence of British Ghana in 1957, forced Paris to gradually give ground. In 1960, as many as 17 African states—14 of which were former French colonies—proclaimed independence. However, this was largely a case of “independence with a flag”: the national symbol changed, but not the economic structure. French influence remained intact thanks to a dense network of ‘cooperation’ agreements which, through technical assistance protocols, defense agreements and, above all, the CFA franc system, ensured Paris substantial control. These agreements obliged African states to repay the infrastructure built during the colonial period (often with forced labor), granted France preemptive rights on strategic exports—particularly uranium—guaranteed French companies tax exemptions thanks to the principle of non-double taxation, imposed the use of the CFA franc controlled by the French Treasury, thus limiting monetary and fiscal sovereignty, and maintained French military bases with free use of infrastructure, including communications and transmissions.

The case of Niger is emblematic. A 1961 defense agreement with Côte d’Ivoire and Dahomey (now Benin) granted France unlimited use of military infrastructure and assets and explicitly defined the role of the French armed forces as guarantor of economic interests, listing strategic raw materials (hydrocarbons, uranium, thorium, lithium, beryllium) and obliging the signatory countries to inform Paris of any export projects and to facilitate the storage of these resources for French defense needs. In this way, the military apparatus became a real instrument for protecting the commercial and geopolitical interests of Paris, which did not want to leave Africa, too important to maintain its colonial financial power and manage its internal wealth on the European continent.

Autonomy and retaliation

After independence in 1960, Modibo Keïta’s Mali sought to embark on an autonomous path inspired by socialism: the creation of state-owned enterprises, the nationalization of key sectors, and, above all, the introduction in 1962 of a national currency outside the CFA franc area. The French reaction was immediate: diplomatic isolation, trade restrictions, and suspension of technical and financial assistance. The resulting economic crisis paved the way for the 1968 coup d’état by Lieutenant Moussa Traoré, supported by France, which brought Mali back into the CFA franc zone in 1984.

In the 1980s and 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, Paris reformulated its African policy by introducing ‘political conditionality’: at the 1990 La Baule summit, François Mitterrand declared that aid would be linked to democratic reforms such as multipartyism. At the same time, the IMF and the World Bank imposed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs): austerity, public sector cuts, trade liberalization. In Mali, these packages accompanied the return to the CFA franc in 1984.

The devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994 was a second shock: officially, it was intended to boost exports and stabilize finances, but in reality it led to price increases, wage erosion, and widespread protests. This new phase combined economic liberalization and externally imposed governance reforms: a facade of “democratization” that consolidated neocolonial control through debt, privatization, and donor-led state restructuring.

These instruments of domination were gradually joined by a Western military presence, particularly from the U.S., when in 2002 the U.S. launched the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which marked the beginning of a lasting military presence in Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania, later extended to Burkina Faso with the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership of 2005.

Since 2011, French and U.S. operations have intensified: U.S. drones, training missions led by AFRICOM, military bases in Gao, N’Djamena, Niamey, Ouagadougou, France’s Operation Barkhane, and the G5 Sahel joint force (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger). Much has changed. Religious terrorism has also been present, keeping the region in a state of precariousness and insecurity, becoming a scourge that is difficult to combat in many areas.

It was in that same year, 2011, that the planned destruction of Gaddafi’s Libya took place, opening the door to uncontrolled arms trafficking and the proliferation of jihadist groups. Libya was a regional pillar, but once bombed, it also destroyed the African Union’s mediation efforts. Sooner or later, the West will have to pay for the enormous harm done to Libya.

Towards ever greater independence

While military interference eroded sovereignty, transnational corporations continued to extract wealth from the Sahel under highly unfair conditions.

This chronic economic dependence has consolidated structural underdevelopment, limiting the ability of states to diversify their economies and negotiate more favorable trade terms. The result is permanent fragility that exposes them to external pressures and fuels political, social, and security crises, where it is not possible today to have only political independence, but it is also necessary to have economic independence.

Since the 1990s, coups and regime changes have become recurrent phenomena, reflecting elites competing for power in weak institutional contexts. Corruption, inadequate public services, and the exclusion of marginalized groups have undermined state legitimacy and increased public mistrust in many African countries.

The recent history of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger shows that the formal independence achieved in the 1960s did not mean effective sovereignty. From the economic mechanisms of “colonial debt” and the CFA franc to defense agreements that integrated French strategic interests, to the “conditionalities” imposed in the 1980s and 1990s and the Western military missions of the 21st century, old forms of domination have in many cases been transformed rather than dissolved, and current leaders who genuinely want to change the situation are faced with a complicated state structure that needs to be completely overhauled. What is more, it is a Western, European structure that needs to be readapted to the African world.

Understanding this trajectory is essential to interpreting the current political phase in the Sahel: only by placing contemporary crises in this historical context can we grasp the meaning of the claims to sovereignty and the radical choices made by governments and civil societies in the region.

Full and effective independence, with sovereignty and autonomy, is possible, but it is still a work in progress, it is not yet complete, and above all, it is a process that starts with an ideological consolidation of ‘who’ and ‘what’ these peoples are. This is followed by the choice of which political forms to adopt, according to their own sensibilities and traditions, even declining socialism in ways unknown to European experience. Driving out what remains of the colonialists, dismantling all their structures, and rebuilding their lands with an African spirit is a mission that will require courage and sacrifice.

One cannot fail to conclude with a quote from President Captain Ibrahim Traoré: “Together and in solidarity, we will triumph over imperialism and neocolonialism for a free, dignified, and sovereign Africa.”

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... ee-africa/

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Moroccans take to the streets in largest protests in years

Prioritizing the expenditure of public finances on building stadiums for the 2030 FIFA World cup, while the situation of healthcare sector, education and employment has been drastically deteriorating, have sparked nationwide protests.

September 30, 2025 by Wahid Ben Ali, Aseel Saleh


Protesters in Morocco. Photo via Izquierda Diario

Demonstrations swept through 11 cities in Morocco over the weekend, with thousands protesting the government’s corruption and expenditure policies. The government has been slammed for prioritizing international sporting events over basic public services including health care, education, and employment.

What makes these protests different from their predecessors?
Although anti-government protests calling for reform have been on the rise in the Maghreb nation during the past few months, the current rallies are marked by participation of groups representing a wide spectrum of social and political backgrounds, and from different ages.

The voices of students blended together with those of trade unionists, and families, forming a holistic protest scene, and reflecting a unifying spirit. This in turn confirms that daily social justice concerns are not confined to a single group, but is rather a popular demand. However, young “leaderless” organizers calling themselves the Gen Z 212, are believed to have organized the nationwide protests via social media networks.

Who are the Gen Z 212?
Observers suggest that the protesters affiliated with the unclearly-shaped Gen Z 212 movement, are young activists closely connected to the digital world and social media networks, who finally decided to convert their online activism into street demonstrations. According to the available media reports, the Gen Z 212 is a new youth movement, whose emergence coincided with the anti-government protests across Morocco during the last couple of days.

Preliminary information indicate that the Gen Z 212 members do not adhere to a certain political party or ideology, and that their movement was shaped inside virtual online discussion rooms on social media networks including Discord, Instagram, and Tiktok. Meanwhile, the acronym Gen Z is thought to be a connotation of Generation Z, people who were born between late 1990s and 2000s, and who rely heavily on the digital world to express their thoughts and opinions.

Local news website Aldar described the Gen Z 212 as a movement that does not call for its social justice demands beyond national constants, while it explicitly declares its commitment to respecting the royal institution under the leadership of King Mohammad VI, and holding on the Moroccan territorial unity.

This in turn may have given the movement some special legitimacy with the regime, distinguishing it from previous attempts of youth to express their opinion, which often clashed with the political and institutional norm in the country. Nonetheless, around 200 protesters were arrested by the Moroccan authorities over the weekend.

What triggered the weekend protests?
Analysts assert that the current uprising seems to be a sort of continuation of earlier mobilizations against government policies which for years have further deepened inequality in the country, weakening the trust of Moroccan citizens in government promises of reform.

For years, Moroccans have expressed outrage due to the continuous deterioration of the living conditions, the high prices, the public education crisis, and a general sentiment of declining social justice, which block their horizon for a better future.

Building 2030 FIFA World cup stadiums, a major trigger for the protests
Although the unavailability and the poor quality of fundamental public services has been a constant over the last decade, with a recent noticeable increases in unemployment rates and prices, the high expenditure that the government has allocated into building stadiums for the 2030 FIFA World Cup became the straw which broke the camel’s back.

The government is building at least three new stadiums, while renovating or expanding several others to co-host the event in 2030, and the Africa Cup of Nations later this year.

“Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” Say protesters
Voicing their indignation, protesters chanted during demonstrations: “Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” a slogan that reflects the precarious situation of the public healthcare system in the north African country, a prolonged crisis that has become more acute in recent months. This crisis manifested in a shortage in health workers, poor hospital infrastructure, and a delayed response to emergency cases, especially in southern and remote areas.

Morocco’s health sector has been facing an escalating crisis throughout 2025, threatening citizens’ constitutional right to health and life, resulting from poor infrastructure, lack of human resources, and limited funding. Despite increasing the health budget by 65%, from 19.7 billion dirhams in 2021 to 32.6 billion dirhams in 2025, the government’s expenditure on health sector remains low compared to regional standards. Morocco spends around 885 dirhams per capita annually, compared to 2,900 dirhams per capita in Tunisia. The funding gap has led to repeated shortages of essential medicines and medical supplies, which in turn aggravate the suffering of patients, especially the most vulnerable.

Morocco also suffers from a severe shortage of doctors and nurses, with less than 15,000 doctors in the public sector serving over 36 million people. This equals 4 doctors per 10,000 people, which is far below the recommended international rates. A recent study indicates that 95% of citizens faced long waiting periods for healthcare services, while 85% reported lack of medical staff. Another 85% said high costs prevented them from obtaining necessary medications or care. Furthermore, patients needing medical imaging or a test are often referred to high-cost private laboratories because diagnostic equipment in hospitals are either insufficient or not functioning.

This structural crisis has led citizens to protest in several cities, including Agadir, demanding improved healthcare services and access to basic care under the banner “End healthcare neglect”. In Agadir, after several women lost their lives during C-section surgical procedures at the Hassan II Hospital, citizens and civil society members organized protests in front of the hospital, demanding swift investigations and tangible improvements in clinics, emergency services, and equipment.

Broader economic and social demands have been called for by demonstrators nationwide too, including improvements to education and employment.

Education and employment slogans resonate in the streets
Unemployment, especially among educated youth, was also a central motivating issue in the weekend protests. Recently published figures showed that the national economy has been unable to absorb graduates from universities and higher institutes. According to the High Commission for Planning (HCP), the national unemployment rate rose to about 13.3% in 2024, a slight increase compared to the previous year.

The numbers become more alarming among people aged 15–24, with unemployment rates reaching record levels of around 36.7%, meaning more than a third of youth of this age group are directly unemployed. Yet, civil society activists argue that even these figures are misleading. According to the annual report of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, young people are forced to join the informal sector, described as an “emergency refuge,” which lacks basic elements of decent work and social protection.

The situation of degree holders is another problem that further complicates the economic situation in the country with about 19.6% unemployment rate, confirming a deep structural gap between the educational system’s output and labor market needs.

This contradiction between painstaking efforts and years of study spent by youth on the one hand, and the lack of professional prospects on the other, has provoked public frustration about a bleak future.

Therefore, the core demands of the protestors are not limited to creating job opportunities within the public sector, but working on real, sustainable plans and programs to generate value-added jobs in other productive sectors.

Protesters have also called for combating corruption as it constitutes a major barrier to the fair distribution of job opportunities and wealth, and for implementing accountability and comprehensive financial transparency.

Draft Law No. 59.24 on higher education and scientific research in Morocco, which was submitted to the Moroccan parliament in late September 2025, has further sparked the ire of students and educational unions. Many organizations considered the draft law a regression from the gains of the Moroccan university and a threat to its independence.

The bill has been mainly criticized as it was formulated unilaterally without real involvement of the key stakeholders such as professors and students and was not presented for consultation with them either. Unions and student organizations have raised complaints about the democratic nature of the legislative process.

Particularly, articles 71, 72, and 73 of the draft faced widespread rejection from student bodies. These articles limit the right to organize within university institutions, undermining freedom of expression and political affiliation for students. Furthermore, educational organizations argue that these articles open the door to the privatization of public universities, which would close universities for Moroccan youth from broader society.

The demands of the protests center on guaranteeing free, quality public education for all, calling for comprehensive curriculum reforms to align with modern labor market needs, avoiding overcrowded classrooms, and providing basic infrastructure in rural and remote areas, including dormitories and school transport.

Morocco rises up against exclusion and inequality
The mass protests witnessed on the streets of Morocco, which are likely to continue, did not emerge out of a vacuum, but resulted from historic policies that have contributed to record-high unemployment among youth and deterioration of essential social services including healthcare and education. The extravagant spending on the World Cup and entertainment infrastructure provide a clear picture of the priorities of the state, and its failure to invest in the people and their livelihoods.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/30/ ... -in-years/

[blindpig]

Africa Will Be Free When the IMF Stops Colluding to Steal Its Wealth: The Forty-First Newsletter (2025)[/i]

In countries like Senegal, the IMF has been complicit with irregular debt practices and fraudulent accounting in order to undermine sovereignty and favour multinational corporations.

9 October 2025


Omar Ba (Senegal), Promenade masquée, 2016.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In February 2025, Senegal’s Court of Auditors released a report that found ‘anomalies’ in the management of public finances between 2019 and 2024, during the presidency of Macky Sall (2012–2024). For instance, the court found that while Sall’s government had suggested that the budget deficit for 2023 was 4.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it was in fact 12.3%. The court went to work on this reconstruction of public finances because of a very significant accusation made by Senegal’s new prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, at a press conference in Dakar in September 2024. What the auditors found, and what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) validated, was that the actual debt ratio in 2023 was 99.7% of GDP – not 74.7% – and that the deficit had been underestimated by 5.6% of GDP (in August 2025, the debt ratio was revised to 111% of GDP).

The financial situation in Senegal, Prime Minister Sonko said, is ‘catastrophic’ because of three problems inherited from the decade of Sall’s rule:

An ‘unbridled debt policy’ that increased the country’s public debt while erasing the possibility of any growth to pay off that debt.
An administration that hid this indebtedness and the deep problems in the economy from the Senegalese people (who nonetheless rejected Sall’s chosen successor, Amadou Ba, in the March 2024 presidential elections and chose Bassirou Diomaye Faye instead).
‘Widespread corruption’, including the defrauding of the country’s COVID fund by four ministers.


Amadou Camara Gueye (Senegal), Pêche métaphysique, 2021.

The evidence that Sall’s government knowingly bankrupted their country and stole from its exchequer is slowly being amassed by President Faye and Prime Minister Sonko. Faye (born in 1980) and Sonko (born in 1974) are both former tax officials who went into politics frustrated by the levels of incompetence, fraud, and corruption in Senegal’s politics and bureaucracy. As young men with patriotic ideals, Faye and Sonko studied at the École nationale d’administration (National School of Administration) and then met in the Directorate General of Taxes and Estates (DGID), where Sonko had created the Autonomous Union of Tax and Estate Agents.

In 2011, the Canadian company SNC-Lavalin won a $50 million contract to build a mineral sands processing plant in Grande Côte. However, it was later revealed in the Paradise Papers that the Senegalese government had signed the contract with an entity known as SNC-Lavalin Mauritius. In other words, the Canadian company had become a Mauritian company (conveniently, there was a tax treaty between Senegal and Mauritius that exempted companies registered in Mauritius from paying taxes in Senegal). Due to this shift in jurisdiction, SNC-Lavalin was able to avoid paying at least $8.9 million in taxes to Senegal (SNC-Lavalin’s annual revenues are about $6 billion – a third the size of the GDP of Senegal, which has a population of 18 million).


Séa Diallo (Senegal), Départ X, 2017.

Prime Minister Sonko was a vocal opponent of this project and, in January 2014, formed a political party called African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF) to carry on the fight. In 2017, he won a seat in the National Assembly, where he raised the issue of tax havens and corporate theft. ‘A tax haven can be a paradise for multinationals that want to avoid paying taxes’, he said in 2018. ‘But for the country, it is hell’. In 2019, Sonko won nearly 16% of the vote in a contentious presidential election. In the 2022 municipal and parliamentary elections, there were major gains for a PASTEF-led coalition called Yewwi Askan Wi (Free the People), with the Socialist Party of Senegal’s candidate Barthélémy Dias elected mayor of Dakar. Then-President Sall was furious with these former tax officials and sought to ban their party and silence Sonko. This led to major demonstrations in 2023–2024 that culminated in the electoral victory of Faye and Sonko. It is no surprise that these former tax officials dug into the accountants’ ledgers and uncovered evidence of fraud.

But are Sall and his government the only ones guilty of fraud? After all, the entire bureaucracy in Senegal, including the Court of Auditors, did not seem to act on the complaints made by Sonko and others, nor on the revelations from the Paradise Papers.

Perhaps the most striking act of malfeasance is not by the Senegalese government but by the IMF. Since Sonko began to raise this issue in 2017, the IMF has published at least seven staff reports on Senegal, none of which indicated that there was any problem with the reporting arrangements on debt or on finances. The IMF’s 2019 staff report, for instance, noted that Senegal’s audit arrangements conformed to the International Financial Reporting Standards and that the country had subscribed to the IMF’s own Special Data Dissemination Standard in 2017. If the IMF signed off on the data being provided by Senegal, then it is just as liable for fraud as the Sall government and should be held to account.


Souleymane Keita (Senegal), Composition, 2010.

In October 2024, following revelations of budgetary misreporting, the IMF suspended Senegal’s lending programme. In March 2025, the IMF’s staff report noted the ‘need for urgent reforms’ in Senegal’s bureaucracy and institutions (but not of the IMF itself). Around the same time, IMF spokesperson Juli Kozack said that Senegal might not need to return the fraudulent borrowings of the Sall government because of the good faith with which the Faye-Sonko government conducted an audit to unravel these irregularities. However, this waiver came with strings attached, as it was to be part of the negotiations between the IMF and Senegal.

The IMF showed its hand in the August 2025 staff report – it wanted to use the possibility of a waiver to extract concessions from the new government, including structural changes to erode whatever remained of Senegalese sovereignty. The Faye-Sonko government won a popular mandate to strengthen sovereignty. The IMF is using the Faye-Sonko government’s honesty about the previous government’s fraud to undermine it. What the IMF seeks is greater access to ‘strategic sectors’ (such as energy and agriculture) via multinational corporations, tighter fiscal discipline by the government (i.e., less social spending for the working class and peasantry), and a continuation of Sall’s 2014 Plan Senegal Émergent, which uses technocratic buzzwords to mask the drain of wealth into the hands of foreign multinationals and the Senegalese elite. The waiver will hang over Faye-Sonko’s government to coerce them to exchange their agenda of sovereignty for the IMF’s agenda of subservience.


Younousse Seye (Senegal), Untitled, 1972.

The case of Senegal is not unusual. In the 1980s, US-backed military governments in Latin America conducted off-budget borrowings, which the IMF took seriously in word but not in action. In 2000, the IMF identified misreporting by Pakistan’s military government but again did nothing, particularly after Pakistan enthusiastically joined the US War on Terror in 2001. Around the same time, the IMF forgave Ukraine for debt misreporting, once again acting under pressure from the US government as it sought to maintain President Leonid Kuchma’s pro-Western orientation. Much the same happened to Congo-Brazzaville in 2002 and Gambia in 2003. In 2006, the IMF released a paper on how to make the misreporting policies ‘less onerous’ so as not to burden countries with heavy penalties. This attitude informed the IMF’s treatment of Mozambique in 2016, when the energy exporter faced challenges from hidden debts.

Governments favoured by Washington are slapped on the wrist while governments eager to develop a sovereign policy are punished.


Pape Daouda Gueye (Senegal), Les amies, 1960.

In September, the great Senegalese musician Cheikh Lô (born 1955) released a new album called Maame (2025). The album features a reggae track called ‘African Development’ that starts with Cheikh Lô intoning the names of Cheikh Anta Diop, Thomas Sankara, and Nelson Mandela before he riffs on the words ‘Free, free, free Africa… Africa must go be free’. This song is a return to the source, to the hopes and aspirations when Senegal won its independence in 1960 and raised its flag under the leadership of its first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. ‘Health first’, sings Cheikh Lô, who goes on to list a number of demands:

Agriculture, livestock farming, fishing.
Education: temple of knowledge.
Vocational training.
Job creation for youth.
Public security.
Preserve natural resources.
Fight poverty.
Fight corruption.
Independent and fair justice.
Develop democracy.

Freedom for Africa is far from guaranteed by the fifty-four flags that fly in in the fifty-four capitals on the continent. Freedom can only come when the people of Africa assert sovereign control over their own resources and emancipate themselves from the indignities of capitalism and imperialism.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... -imf-debt/

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Ibrahim Traoré and the resurrection of Pan-Africanism
Andrés Ruggeri

October 8, 2025 , 1:56 pm .


Supporters of Burkina Faso's President Captain Ibrahim Traoré hold placards during a rally in his support at Place de la Nation in Ouagadougou on April 30, 2025. (Photo: Getty Images)

The presence of a young African soldier on the stage in Moscow's Red Square on May 9, at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the victory in the war against Nazi Germany, did not go unnoticed by observers of global geopolitical movements. Ibrahim Traoré, the 38-year-old leader of the military junta that came to power on September 30, 2022, with an anti-colonialist discourse in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, shared the stage with veteran and powerful leaders such as Xi Jinping, Lula, and Vladimir Putin himself. The Russian president gave him a prominent space in the celebration, which, in addition to being a striking demonstration of the might of the Russian armed forces, was an explicit demonstration of the increasingly compelling geopolitical alliance led by China and Russia. Traoré stood out for his presence, dressed in fatigues and wearing the red beret of his historical figure, the Burkinabe revolutionary Thomas Sankara, assassinated in 1987. And, for Latin Americans, also the beret of Hugo Chávez, with whom he has many points of contact.

Traoré was also coming off a historic event days earlier, when a continental African demonstration was called in his support on April 30. The left and social movements across the continent, from the Maghreb to South Africa, mobilized in support of the Burkinabe leader, who had denounced multiple coup attempts and conspiracies against him and, together with his allies from similar governments in Niger and Mali—the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States, the AES —expelled French troops and US bases from their territories. The march was held in the main African capitals and cities with the explicit demand for Pan-Africanism, the political and ideological movement of the unity of the peoples of Africa against colonialism that seemed abandoned since the 1990s. Traoré thus became the symbol of a revival of what was the most representative movement in the struggle for the liberation of the colonized peoples of Africa.

Ibrahim Traoré and his AES allies also embody a very concrete struggle against the neocolonial ties that have subjugated the Sahel since these countries' independence from the French Empire in the early 1960s, through a policy that includes nationalizations, measures to improve the lives of the working class, and the expulsion of foreign troops. All this is coupled with the vindication of the legendary Thomas Sankara, the Marxist revolutionary who attempted a process cut short by the betrayal of his lieutenant and best friend, Blaise Compaoré, in the late 1980s. Although not as clearly and explicitly Marxist as Sankara, Traoré openly revives his image, not only in his beret but also with his policies and symbolic gestures such as renaming the main avenue in the capital, Ouagadougou, from Charles de Gaulle to Thomas Sankara.

All these factors position Traoré as the figurehead of this political resurgence of the peoples of the Sahel.

The Alliance of Sahel States
The Sahel region is the semi-arid strip that marks the transition between the Sahara Desert and the tropical zones of the Gulf of Guinea and the center of the continent. The countries in this area are among the poorest in Africa and the most disadvantaged by nature, especially due to the advance of desertification in recent decades. Conquered at the end of the 19th century, the withdrawal of the French empire in the early 1960s, although it occurred without wars or bloody insurgencies, left a legacy of instruments of neocolonial subjugation that have even been reinforced in recent years by a strong presence of NATO troops, mostly from the former metropolis, but also from the United States.

The pretext for this covert invasion was the emergence in 2011—not coincidentally, following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya—of a powerful Islamist insurgency that challenged the region's pro-Western regimes. The savagery that characterizes these offshoots of groups like the Islamic State or various variants of al-Qaeda challenged the control of weak state apparatuses in large areas, especially the most remote ones, and posed a problem for the gold and strategic mineral extraction corporations that abound in the region, leaving almost nothing behind and exporting them directly to France and other centers of global power. Much greater was the damage caused to the populations attacked by this insurgency, which generally uses the ISIS franchise but has local origins and generally has opaque ties to regional powers. The coup that brought Ibrahim Traoré to power is part of the failure of the Burkinabe army, as well as French troops, to control these jihadist groups, which by 2020 already dominated 40% of the country's surface.

However, Traoré did not adhere to the security and "fight against terrorism" agenda as a sole program, much less under the operational command of the French. The young military man who led the coup quickly assumed a very different identity, defending Burkinabe's popular majorities and, especially, those abandoned regions most affected by the Islamist insurgency, such as Mouhoun, from which he himself hails. He also developed an understanding of the government's task based on a clear anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist focus. It was a sharp break with the last thirty years of Burkina Faso's political history, ruled by corrupt governments and subject to neocolonial domination since the coup d'état that ended Sankara's revolutionary experience in 1987. And, precisely, Traoré embraced the vindication of that experience as part of his political identity.

In neighboring Mali and Niger, other military governments with similar characteristics to Burkina Faso's, headed respectively by Assimi Goita and Abdourahamane Tchiani, pursued similar policies, beginning with a joint break with the most obvious ties of neocolonial domination, the expulsion of French and American military bases and troops, and the nationalization of natural resources that were uncontrolled exports to Paris. The three governments' stances quickly put them at odds with other countries in the region that remained loyal to Western powers and their economic and geopolitical agendas. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the association established in 1975 to, in theory, consolidate regional unity and economic progress, even threatened military intervention in response to the coup in Niger—the third such coup—something that was not supposed to be part of its remit.

The three countries, led by nationalist military governments and enjoying widespread popular support, were expelled from ECOWAS, prompting the immediate formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (ESA). The threat of invasion was a deterrent that failed in the face of the firmness of the new governments, which responded with the ESA and a military alliance and mutual defense treaty to counter the threat posed by the countries that remained in ECOWAS, a major challenge to the regional status quo .

The geopolitical implications of the formation of the ESA are evident. The three governments took measures that led to the severing of neocolonial ties with the West, which had immediate consequences, embodied by the reaction of the countries in the region most aligned with the European Union and the United States. But they also meant opening up to Chinese investment and, notably, to Russian economic and military presence in a region that was never under the umbrella of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation's policy of building strong economic and political ties with African countries extends beyond the military realm, as evidenced by the organization of the Russia-Africa Summits launched in 2019. At the 2023 summit, Sahel leaders strengthened economic ties but also signed formal military cooperation treaties with Russia. These agreements transcend the ever-ambiguous relations with groups like Wagner, which was withdrawn from the region following its bizarre mutiny in Russia amid the war in Ukraine and the death of its leader, Prigozhin.

Putin's invitation and the place he gave Traoré in the Victory Parade are another example of this alignment, which, however, is not complete. It is part of a diversification of support that includes investments from other European countries and a delicate balance in the ever-unstable African politics.

On the other hand, breaking the complex and intricate mechanisms that bind the Sahel countries to the old colonial metropolises is not so simple. All three countries continue to depend almost entirely on the export of mineral resources. Gold, for example, has stopped going to France and has gone to Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. Uranium continues to be exported to power French nuclear power plants. Most delicately, it is not so easy for these nations to escape the trap of the single currency controlled by France, the CFA franc, whose value and reserves are determined by the French Central Bank. The intention to create a new AES currency is in the planning stages, but has not yet been implemented. The AES still needs greater economic strength to be able to move in this direction.

Finally, breaking the inertia of several decades of neocolonial rule—which followed direct colonization—does not occur without tension or opposition. Military factions opposed to the new course have attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to overthrow governments or even assassinate their leaders. The exposure of one such plot prompted the call for a continental mobilization on April 30. The jihadist insurgency continues to strike hard, despite some initial successes, causing death, destruction, and population displacement. The coincidence of its attacks with the interests of Western powers does not seem to be a coincidence.

The Resurrection of Thomas Sankara
A geopolitical shift of such magnitude cannot occur without a strong base of popular support. The mobilizations and organization of the people of the Sahel are the mainstay of the AES, especially Traoré's leadership. This mobilization is not only driven by weariness due to France's constant interference, the abuses of Western militaries, or the terror of radical Islamists, but also by a radical shift in state policy. The revival of Sankara's figure is no coincidence either.

Thomas Sankara ruled Burkina Faso between 1983 and 1987, when he was betrayed and assassinated by his comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaoré, who held power until 2014. A succession of coups and fraudulent governments followed Compaoré's fall, reversing most of Sankara's policies, until September 2022, when a final coup brought Ibrahim Traoré to power. It was only then that the self-described Marxist and Pan-Africanist army captain was publicly vindicated again. Sankara was the one who changed the country's name from the colonial Upper Volta—which refers to the river that runs through its territory—to Burkina Faso, which in the Moorish language means "homeland of the righteous people."

The measures implemented by Sankara were radical and spectacular: he increased literacy rates from 13% to 73% of the population in three years; in the same period, he achieved food self-sufficiency in a country accustomed to famine, through an agrarian reform that redistributed land to the peasantry; he outlawed female genital mutilation and granted full citizenship rights to women, including appointing several of them to ministerial positions; he implemented intensive vaccination campaigns with the help of Cuban doctors; he built a huge number of schools, health centers, and housing; he cut the luxury spending of high-ranking officials—most famously, the mandatory use of the small Renault 5 as an official car—and he boosted relations with the socialist countries of the era.

None of this came without a price for Sankara; it cost him his life in one of the most infamous episodes in the country's short history.

Traoré did not declare himself a Marxist, but rather an anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist, and he rehabilitated the memory of Sankara. He accompanied this change in official stance with a series of measures that followed the lead of the Burkinabe revolutionary of the 1980s. The objective of Traoré's policy was to move toward greater autonomy from foreign powers, both in terms of political sovereignty, by expelling the French and American military and breaking the alliances dictated by neocolonialism, and in economic terms, by expanding the productive support base and controlling mineral resources. In the former case, the forced withdrawal of French troops led not only to operational autonomy for the Burkinabe armed forces but also to collaboration with its neighbors in the AES, Mali and Niger, along with the creation of volunteer militias to more effectively combat the Islamist insurgency. In the second, a series of measures such as the nationalization of gold reserves—estimated at $80 million—the creation of a state-owned company for its extraction and processing, and a sustained effort to improve agricultural productivity—reviving Sankara's measures—have led to GDP growth of around 4% to 6% annually.

Traoré's government also increased public employee salaries, created a state-owned dairy factory, and promoted its own scientific and technological development. Social support for this national resurgence sustained him in power despite threats and adversity.

The resurgence of Pan-Africanism
All these measures and advances have had a profound impact on the battered African left, which embraced them as a new and unexpected reference point that rescued not only Sankara but also the founding principle of the African liberation movement: Pan-Africanism. In fact, this was the main motivation for the continental mobilization of April 30, held under the slogan "Hands off the AES!", which spread to numerous African countries, from Ghana to South Africa, and also to Western cities such as New York and Paris.

The trigger was the Burkinabe government's denunciation of the dismantling of a coup plot organized from the Ivory Coast on April 21. Shortly before, General Michael Langley, head of the African equivalent of the United States Southern Command, AFRICOM, had visited the country, also a member of ECOWAS, and denounced the Burkinabe revolutionary government's nationalization of gold as corruption. A significant detail is the presence in the Ivory Coast, as an asylum seeker, of the deposed Compaoré, who had betrayed Sankara and established a repressive, pro-Western dictatorship for nearly three decades. Compaoré was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in April 2022 for the assassination of his former friend and boss.

The figure of Traoré, along with his allies in Mali and Niger, is becoming an unavoidable reference for the resurgence of the Pan-Africanist movement, which calls for the unity of African peoples against colonialism and neocolonialism. Current leaders in the Sahel thus see themselves following the path of former leaders of the African independence struggle, such as Patrice Lumumba of the former Belgian Congo; Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana; Sekou Touré of Guinea Conakry; Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau; and Sankara himself.

Associated with the so-called "Spirit of Bandung," the grand gathering of Third World countries in that Indonesian town in 1955, the Pan-Africanist movement has its roots in the early Marxist theorists who framed the popular struggle against the colonial powers of the era as a continental cause rather than one of the nations emerging from the administrative divisions of empires. WE Du Bois and George Padmore were its first theorists and conveners in the first half of the 20th century, before African independence was achieved. Padmore, in particular, from his early Marxist activism, gave Pan-Africanism a class imprint that, after his break with the Third International, he redefined as combining class exploitation with racism and the colonial situation. This idea of ​​a proposed African continental struggle found echoes in the first generation of independence leaders, especially Nkrumah, to whom Padmore was an advisor, already in the beginnings of Ghana as an independent country, along with other leaders of that early stage of the new African nations in which the idea of ​​an "African socialism" spread, based on a path of its own from the communal traditions of its peoples.

A second moment, imbued with the armed struggle against the Portuguese Empire and South African apartheid, radicalized Pan-African efforts toward Marxism, due to the juxtaposition of the anti-colonial struggle with the East-West confrontation of the Cold War, especially in Southern Africa (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, among other countries). Cuban internationalist participation (mainly in support of the Angolan MPLA against the forces of South African apartheid) also influenced the Marxist perspective of the anti-colonial movement. Although isolated from these contexts, Sankara's experience can also be inscribed within this second wave of the Pan-African movement. The fall of the USSR and the global rise of neoliberalism led to the rapid defection of several of the liberation movements that had fought so arduously, both from socialist ideals and from Pan-Africanism, whose ideological influence on African governments after the Cold War became trivial or nonexistent in most cases. Ibrahim Traoré and the Alliance of Sahel States are here to revive the memory of these old movements and give them strength for their resurgence. At least, that's what numerous social movements, unions, peasants, and political groups of the African left see, who consider him a "beacon" of Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism, while the AES and its young leaders navigate the choppy waters of a world in which old imperial hegemonies are beginning to crumble.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/ibrahi ... fricanismo

Google Translator

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World War III: The African Scenario

Investigation by Marat Khairullin
Zinderneuf
Oct 10, 2025

In the world, besides the direct Russian-Ukrainian front, another war rages between progressive forces and the West (“progressive” from the Russian: прогрессивных; not meant in the Western political sense). This is Africa. Primarily the northern part, where American and other hegemonies are rapidly losing ground.

In a series of investigations about the Sahel countries (this is the central "savanna" Africa, where the Sahara desert transitions into jungles), we have already spoken of the first stage of this battle between good and evil. Three countries in the heart of the Sahel have one after another overthrown pro-Western (specifically pro-French) governments. These are Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

These countries are home to incredible natural wealth, yet they have the poorest populations due to the predatory exploitation by the West.

They were the first to announce the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), the expulsion of French military forces, and the unification of their armed forces under a single command to fight numerous separatist gangs.



De facto, these united forces are commanded by our General Surovikin, and this fact immediately revived the hopes of the peoples of Africa for normal economic development.


General Surovikin in Africa, public sources

The symbol of this was to be the first railway running through the Sahel from west (port of Dakar) to east (Port Sudan). The Trans-African Railway is, one might say, the blue dream of the Black Continent. At the end of 2024, two more countries along the route of this proposed railway announced the termination of military cooperation with France – Senegal and Chad. Thus, the only country standing in the way of this project was Sudan.



And last year, the collective West (specifically the United Kingdom, France, and the USA) ignited another bloody war in this country to prevent by any means the departure of African countries from their neocolonial yoke. Today, one can say this is the key conflict in the Sahel, which we will now describe.

In general, in response to the expanding presence of Russia (and de facto China and Iran) in Africa, the West has unleashed a series of conflicts in the region adjacent to the Sahel: Kenya, Congo, Chad. Tensions are rising between Morocco and Algeria, Eritrea and Ethiopia. These are all attempts by any means to prevent the final liberation from neocolonialism.

And this is not counting the increased activity of terrorist groups in almost all North African countries from Algeria and Libya to Kenya and Ethiopia. What is happening truly resembles a world war involving huge masses of people. Even during colonial times, Africa did not have so many hotspots of bloody conflicts. But the most important geopolitical point, I repeat, is happening in Sudan.

Sudan was freed from British colonialism in the early 1950s. Immediately, a war broke out between the Christian "black" south and the Muslim "Arab" north. The conflict led to the separation of South Sudan. We will talk about it later, but it must be said that independence did not bring happiness to this country rich in natural resources – its people continue to be mercilessly exploited in the interests of the West.

In Greater Sudan, as a result of a series of civil wars, Omar al-Bashir came to power in the 1990s. Under his leadership, Sudan managed to stabilize the situation for the first time since its founding, and even recorded a small economic growth. This was categorically unacceptable to the West, and Sudan was targeted with all means.


Omar al-Bashir

Al-Bashir became the first head of state whom the International Criminal Court (remember it?) issued a warrant for. In this regard, he was very similar to the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who also pursued an independent national policy and sought cooperation with Russia. Our country did not support the ICC warrant and invited al-Bashir to the Sochi Olympics, which then caused hysteria among our sworn non-partners.

In turn, al-Bashir invited Russian business into the country; at one point, Sudan became our largest partner in Africa.

But everything changed when, in 2019, al-Bashir proposed to Russia to establish a military base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea. He was immediately overthrown by two generals: the Commander of the Armed Forces, head of the Military Council al-Burhan, and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (in fact an armed militia) Muhammad Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo.
Formally, al-Burhan became the leader, but in fact the country was ruled by a diarchy.

At the same time, al-Burhan initially honestly tried (under Western orders) to impose "democracy" in the country (under this slogan the coup took place), but then gave up and began to lean towards cooperation with Russia, China, and Iran. It ended with him proposing at the beginning of 2024 that these three countries establish military bases in Port Said. The Rapid Support Forces attacked al-Burhan (of course, under Western orders).


Rapid Support Forces in Sudan

Interestingly, throughout 2024, the West tried to bring the rebellious general back under control. The rebels controlled half of the capital and a large suburb. Among the Rapid Support Forces appeared Ukrainian and Colombian mercenaries. They were supplied by the world-famous British private military company SAS International. Even in the mercenary world, there are no bigger scum and executioners than the mercenaries of this company. Accordingly, the Ukrainians and Colombians in Sudan proved themselves as true enforcers. Refugee camps in the city of El Fashir were guarded by these mercenaries.

At the same time, news began to come in about brutal Ukrainian and Colombian Nazis who carried out extrajudicial executions, mass killings of civilians, and destruction of civilian objects. One of the latest crimes of the Ukrainians in Sudan is the forced extraction of blood from local residents. They catch people by the dozens and take so much blood that people most often die after this procedure. Local sources suggest that this blood is supplied to Ukraine to parts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Under Zelensky, the Ukrainian nation is gaining more and more bad reputation in the world: call centers, drug production, mercenarism, biolaboratories… And now also the theft of other people's blood. After this war, Ukrainians will have to wash off the stigma of a nation of criminals for a very long time.

However, let's return to Sudan. Al-Burhan did not succumb to pressure. During the summer, he drove the rebels out of the capital and began an offensive to the south of the country. Just recently, news came that the Rapid Support Forces were driven out of El Fashir, with a significant number of Ukrainian and Colombian mercenaries killed. In addition, on the border, the rebels began to be pushed back by the forces of the Central African Republic and Russian military specialists. Military forces in Chad also began to exert pressure on the enemy.

Interesting events also took place in this country. The battles against the Rapid Support Forces were led by Chadian military under the command of the president's cousin, Yaya Dillo (he was the leader of Chad's "Socialist Party Without Borders"). Dillo was the main contender for the presidency of Chad after the previous president—his uncle—was killed by terrorists (of course, pro-Western). And the uncle was killed precisely because he was going to move closer to China and Russia.


Yaya Dillo

His nephew declared in the 2024 elections that the main political goal would be liberation from neocolonialism and rapprochement with Russia. He was also killed later. The elections were won by more moderate forces—the son of the former president, Mahamat ibn Idriss Déby Itno (known as "Kaka" in Chad). But he also did not last; in the fall of 2024, he went to a meeting with Putin, and after that, he broke off military cooperation with France. Immediately after, an attempt at a coup d'état was made in Chad.

The presidential palace was burned down by traitors from Chad's security service, but the president held firm and, in January 2025, finally expelled the French from the country.

In other words, despite attempts at coups in key Sahel countries—Chad and Sudan—the progressive forces oriented primarily towards the axis of good—Russia, Iran, China—are winning. The struggle is far from over, but a clear trend has already emerged—Africa has made its choice. And as soon as Russia strengthened, Africa began to fight for its freedom with doubled strength, relying largely on our country. However, Sudan and Chad are only one of many conflicts on the African continent. We will speak of others next time.

Russia is engaged in a direct conflict with the West in Ukraine. At the same time, it manages to conduct proxy wars on the African continent. And not just conduct them, but win. In some cases, moral support alone is enough for victory. As in the case of Sudan.

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... n-scenario

[blindpig]

‘We can win this struggle’: Sankara’s message for today
October 14, 2025 Struggle - La Lucha


Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso, at an international press conference on trees and forests at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, 1986.

“We can win this struggle if we choose to be architects and simply not bees.” – Thomas Sankara, Imperialism is the arsonist of our forests and savannas, 1986

We honor the life and revolutionary achievements of Thomas Sankara, known as “Africa’s Che Guevara.” A man on a mission to lift Burkina Faso out of the death grip of imperialism and transform it into a beacon of progress and true liberation on the African continent.

Under the leadership of Thomas Sankara, Upper Volta became the country of Burkina Faso, “The Land of Upright People.” Literacy rates rose exponentially across the whole country. Over two million Burkinabé children were vaccinated. He ended Burkina Faso’s reliance on Western aid and set out to create self-sufficiency for the country.

Land was redistributed amongst the working class and peasants of the country, and out of the hands of wealthy landlords under the control of Western imperialists. Ten million trees were planted across the country. Roads and railways were built to connect the country. All of these steps helped create better living conditions for the people of Burkina Faso while also healing the old wounds caused by imperialism and setting the country on a path towards progress.

Thomas Sankara saw the full picture of the global class struggle. He did not set out to create a better Burkina Faso without the country’s women. He banned genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy. Women were appointed to government positions and were able to, and encouraged to, join the country’s workforce and military. Pregnancy leave was granted for all expectant mothers.

He was a man committed to the people. Under his guidance, the old Western luxury and corruption within the Burkinabé government were done away with. Public servants drove cars produced in Burkina Faso and wore clothing made entirely of 100% Burkinabé cotton, tailored by Burkinabé artisans. He never allowed portraits and monuments of himself to be erected in public because he fully believed that it was the people who made this progress happen. He said himself that there are “seven million Thomas Sankaras.”

His love of his country extended to the entire African continent. He believed that all of Africa had the right to tear away from the claws of Western imperialism. His passion for pan African liberation made him a target of Western imperialists and those of the African elite who wanted to continue gutting their continent all for their Western masters.

Thomas Sankara was brutally assassinated and gunned down in 1987, only four years into his presidency. Betrayed by Blaise Compaoré, a onetime ally turned rival who seized power and reversed Sankara’s policies until a popular revolution ousted him in 2014 and sent him into exile. France has yet to release its classified records regarding the assassination of Thomas Sankara.

In the 21st century, the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Sankara lives on. Currently, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the sitting president of Burkina Faso, is continuing the mission set out by Thomas Sankara to see a fully liberated Burkina Faso, free of neocolonial rule and Western interference.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2025/ ... for-today/

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Madagascar’s military seizes power after parliament impeaches fleeing President Rajoelina

According to reports, President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar fled to France following an agreement with President Emmanuel Macron. While he insists that he remains the leader, the military has taken over and the National Assembly has impeached him.

October 14, 2025 by Nicholas Mwangi


An elite army unit has announced it has taken control of the military as soldiers join anti-government protests. Photo: screensho

Weeks of youth-led demonstrations against water and power shortages in Madagascar have escalated into a full-blown political crisis, with an elite military unit announcing that it now commands the armed forces in what President Andry Rajoelina has described as a coup d’état.

On Tuesday October 14, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, acting commander of the elite CAPSAT military unit, announced on national radio that the military had taken control of state institutions and would form a transitional government. Randrianirina later told reporters that a committee led by the military would oversee the country for a transitional period of up to two years, working alongside a civilian government before organizing new elections.

This is after the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to impeach President Andry Rajoelina (130 in favor, one blank), just hours after he attempted to dissolve parliament by decree on Monday.

The mass protests, described as the largest in the country in years, initially forced Rajoelina to dissolve his government in late September. But the move did little to quell public anger. Instead, demands intensified, with protesters calling for the president’s resignation after years of economic hardship and deteriorating public services.

Rajoelina, who was scheduled to address the nation on Monday evening, was reportedly evacuated from the capital following an arrangement brokered with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to Radio France Internationale (RFI). French authorities later stated that they were not intervening in Madagascar’s internal crisis, which has continued to escalate since September 25.

Elite military unit declares control
The escalation reached a new level this week when members of CAPSAT, an elite army unit, declared they had taken control of the armed forces. The declaration followed reports that some military soldiers had joined the protesters in the streets of Antananarivo and other cities last week. CAPSAT had a major role in the 2009 political upheaval that first brought Rajoelina to power.

Political shake-up fails to quell anger
The president had previously attempted to restore order by appointing Army General Ruphin Fortunat Zafisambo as prime minister, following the dissolution of his civilian government. However, the appointment appears to have failed to stabilize the situation.

Many had condemned the government’s heavy-handed response to the demonstrations in recent weeks. Security forces used tear gas, arbitrary arrests, and live ammunition against largely peaceful protesters, leaving at least 22 people dead and over 100 injured, according to UN human rights officials.

Deep-rooted discontent
Rajoelina’s 15-year grip on power, including his return to the presidency in 2018 and contested re-election in 2023, has done little to address Madagascar’s deep social and economic problems. The island nation remains one of the poorest in the world, with millions lacking reliable access to water, electricity, and essential services.

Popular anger, fueled by unemployment, corruption, and inequality, has been building for years and exploded into the current wave of protests, largely driven by young people.

Now as the situation rapidly unfolds, Madagascar faces deep uncertainty. If the military solidifies its hold, it could mark the second successful coup in the country’s modern history.

With what is unfolding, whether this crisis ushers in a political transition and stability will depend on the coming days, but the anger driving Madagascar’s youth-led movement has already reshaped the nation’s political reality.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/14/ ... rajoelina/

Mali retaliates against US imposition of steep visa fees with reciprocal fees for US nationals

Mali has distinguished itself as the only one to retaliate, while the governments of the rest of the seven African countries, whose nationals face USD 5,000-15,000 visa bond requirement, seek to placate Trump.

October 14, 2025 by Pavan Kulkarni


Mr. Abdoulaye Diop, Mali's minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, speaks on a panel about strategic autonomy and partnership between African countries. Photo: MFA Mali

The government of Mali has hit back at the US by imposing a reciprocal bond on visa issuance, requiring US nationals to deposit up to USD 10,000 for business and tourist visas to the Sahelian country.

Earlier on October 10, the US embassy in Mali announced, “Effective October 23, 2025, nationals of Mali who are otherwise found eligible for a B-1/B-2 business or tourist visa will be required to post a visa bond of up to $10,000 before the visa can be issued.”

Mali is among the seven countries on which the US has imposed a “Visa Bond Pilot Program”. All of them are African. “The pilot reinforces the United States government’s commitment to protecting America’s borders and safeguarding US national security,” said the embassy note.

It added that the reasons for inclusion on this list may include “high overstay rates, screening and vetting deficiencies, concerns regarding acquisition of citizenship by investment without a residency requirement, and foreign policy considerations.”

The latter appears most relevant in the case of Mali, where the regime of President Ibrahim Keïta, propped up by France, was ousted in a coup supported by mass protests in 2020. The popular military government went on to expel French troops in 2022.

After neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger went through a similar process and expelled French troops in 2023, the trio formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), which has emerged as a key anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist bloc, defying Western hegemony on the continent.

Read More: Niger hosts historic conference on the fight against neocolonialism in the Sahel
Mali’s foreign ministry said in a statement on October 11 that it “deplores the unilateral decision of the US” to impose the costly bond on its nationals, undermining “the Agreement on the Institution of a Long-Term Multiple-Entry Visa”, effective between the two countries since 2005.

“In accordance with the principle of reciprocity, Mali has decided to implement an identical visa program, imposing on US nationals the same conditions and requirements applied to Malian citizens,” the ministry added.

Trump hits Africa with “visa bond” program
So far, Mali is the only one to retaliate. Zambia, ruled by the government of President Hakainde Hichilema, condemned by his left opponents as a neocolonial agent serving the Western powers, was among the first countries whose nationals were slapped with the bond requirement.

“While the government of the United States of America has a prerogative to initiate policy changes, the Zambian government views this development with serious concern, given its potential economic implications on trade, investment, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges. This includes the unnecessary financial strain on Zambian Nationals,” its foreign ministry decried.

“The decision is contrary to the spirit of the meeting held with [the US ambassador] His Excellency, Mr. Michael C. Gonzales,” just over three months ago in July, where discussions “centered on exploring new pathways to deepen the enduring partnership between the two nations.”

Without announcing any countermeasures, the ministry went on “to assure the public that this matter is being treated with the urgency and seriousness it deserves”, and is engaging with the US “at the highest level” to “explore possible solutions”.

The bond requirement took effect on Zambian nationals alongside those from Malawi on August 20. The consular officer interviewing the visa applicant will determine if the bond amount will be five, 10, or 15 thousand dollars.

“The full visa bond amount will be returned if the applicant” departs the US on time before the visa’s expiry, according to the Bureau of Consular Affairs. However, the hefty amount imposed on nationals of some of the poorest countries effectively constitutes a travel ban for most.

Those who can afford the bond amount can enter and exit the US only through three designated airports: the Boston Logan International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the Washington Dulles International Airport.

Gambia was subsequently added to the list, effective from October 11. From October 23, nationals of three countries other than Mali will also face this financial barrier to US entry: Mauritania, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Tanzania.

Tanzania’s government “would like to assure the public that it will continue … discussions with the US Government through diplomatic channels to find a solution,” its spokesperson said in a statement.

“The government of Tanzania insists that its relationship with the United States is built on a foundation of friendship, partnership, and mutual respect of long standing, and therefore this step will not change Tanzania’s intention to continue the good relationship with that country.”

With the reciprocal retaliation against the US, Mali has distinguished itself in this group of seven countries. Last week, its neighbor Burkina Faso, another member of the AES, also snubbed the US, rejecting President Donald Trump’s proposal to deport foreign nationals to the country as “indecent”, and refusing to give in to “blackmail” when the US embassy paused visa processing in an alleged retaliation.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/14/ ... nationals/

[blindpig]

Thomas Sankara’s legacy lives on in Burkina Faso 38 years after his death

A massacre led by Blaise Compaoré, an ally of France, put an end to the 1983 revolution, which today inspires struggles in the Sahel

October 15, 2025 by Pedro Stropasolas


Simone Prosper considers himself a “son of Sankara.” He sees Ibrahim Traoré's government as a continuation of the 1983 revolution (Photo: Pedro Stropasolas)

Exactly 38 years ago, Burkina Faso lost its revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara. The country’s former president was killed during a coup d’état that also took the lives of 12 of his comrades on October 15, 1987.

The massacre took place at the headquarters of the National Revolutionary Council and was led by his then ally, Blaise Compaoré, with direct support from foreign forces, mainly from France.

The coup brought an end to four years of unprecedented revolution on the African continent. In a short time, Sankara transformed one of the poorest countries in the world into a symbol of sovereignty and dignity.

For Valentin Sankara, the younger brother of the Burkinabe leader, the former president governed the country with one non-negotiable principle: to serve the people of the country. “He didn’t like injustice, even at home, with us, his brothers and sisters. I can say that it was this behavior that led him to take power,” Valentin points out.

The “African Che Guevara,” as he is called, led the revolution of August 4, 1983, in Burkina Faso. The following year, Sankara changed the country’s name from the Republic of Upper Volta, a legacy of French colonial power, to the People’s Democratic Republic of Burkina Faso, which means “Land of Upright Men.”

The visionary leader, known for his modest lifestyle, promoted the manufacture and consumption of local products in Burkina Faso. He himself set an example by wearing only cotton manufactured in Burkina Faso.

Leading a movement to break away from neo-colonial rule, Sankara carried out radical reforms in the health, education, and agriculture sectors, charting a path to food self-sufficiency that was unprecedented in the country. Musician Sawadogo Pasmamde, known as Oceán, explains.

“Sankara’s revolution has already triggered something that even Ibrahim Traoré [the current president] is now reestablishing with his revolution. In other words, to liberate the people, they must have the right to their land. A people without land is a slave people,” explains the artist.

“He understood that for the people to be free and dignified, they needed to have food to eat. That is why his fundamental policy was agrarian reform. The land belongs to the state, which now returns it to the population so that they can cultivate it, with support in terms of technical assistance and agricultural resources,” he adds.

The assassination
In a historic speech delivered in July 1987 at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the first president of Burkina Faso denounced debt and the Bretton Woods institutions, an international agreement made after World War II that created the rules of the global economy. According to Sankara, both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were legacies of colonialism. Months later, he would be killed.

The former president was shot in cold blood by soldiers allied with Compaoré on October 15, 1987. His former friend took power shortly thereafter, ruling Burkina Faso for 27 years under heavy repression and alignment with the West.

“Sankara’s assassination on October 15, 1987, marked the end of the revolution. However, the revolution led by Sankara had a vision of happiness, development, and prosperity for Burkina Faso, for Africa, and for the world. He always said that those who love other peoples also love their own people. Sankara loved other peoples, and they also loved the people of Burkina,” says Luc Damiba, special advisor to the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso and coordinator of the Thomas Sankara Memorial Committee.

For almost three decades, talking about Thomas Sankara became taboo in Burkina Faso. His portraits, books, and speeches were banned. Amid the silence imposed by the Compaoré regime, voices emerged that were willing to preserve his memory, such as that of Simone Prosper, who is now a guide and salesman at the Thomas Sankara Memorial.

“After assassinating President Thomas Sankara, their goal was to eliminate all traces of the revolution, meaning that newspapers that mentioned President Sankara and photos of President Sankara were collected and burned. I was very young at the time and thought: as long as I live, the image of the captain will travel around the world,” Prosper points out.

Investigation and conviction of Compaoré
After the popular uprising of 2014 and the end of Compaoré’s regime, the country was able to begin investigations and trials into the death of the African leader.

Against all evidence, Sankara’s death was classified as a natural death until April 2008. Several requests for access to French archives to try to determine whether the former colonial power was involved in Sankara’s death were ignored by the French government.

Investigations in Burkina Faso established the direct responsibility of Compaoré, then Minister of Justice, after confirming the presence of soldiers from his close guard among the commanders of the massacre. According to the investigation, the assassins left from Compaoré’s residence, some borrowing one of his vehicles. The Burkinabe judiciary also revealed the presence of French agents in Ouagadougou on October 16, 1987, the day after the coup d’état. During the trial, more than 110 witnesses were heard.

In 2022, the dictator was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Military Court of Burkina Faso and “asked for forgiveness” from Sankara’s family. The court also sentenced his personal guard commander, Hyacinthe Kafando, and General Gilbert Diendéré, one of the leaders of the Armed Forces at the time of the 1987 coup, to the same sentence.

The three were found guilty of “complicity in murder,” “concealment of a corpse,” and “violation of state security,” losing all their military decorations.

Compaoré now lives in exile in Ivory Coast, whose president, Allassane Outtara, is one of France’s main allies in West Africa.

Inspiration, not revenge
Musician Oceán, who grew up inspired by Sankara, recalls the impact that the assassination had on the entire country.

“Personally, I was a pioneer of Thomas Sankara’s revolution. From elementary school, we were chosen and began to be taught the ideology, and according to our grade level at the time, they already told us what capitalism was in simple terms, teaching us that capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and telling us that it is a crime against humanity, preparing us to continue the revolution when he grew old. Unfortunately, he was unable to finish his work, and we were left like orphans. But each of us maintained our revolutionary values in our respective fields of activity,” recalls Oceán.

“We grew up with the desire not to avenge Sankara, because we cannot respond to violence with violence, but to bring Burkina back on the right path, because we were firmly convinced that this was the only way forward for our people,” he adds.

Among young people up to 35 years old, who make up 75% of the country’s population, Sankara’s thinking lives on, particularly in the measures taken by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the current head of state and central figure in the new patriotic revolution currently underway in the Sahel.

Sankara and the current struggles in the Sahel
The national coordinator of Burkinabe youth, Lianhoué Imhotep Bayala, reaffirms young people’s support for the measures implemented by the Alliance of Sahel States to break with France.

“It must be said that African youth are at a crossroads and at a decisive moment where they no longer want to be told what to do, as Thomas Sankara said in 1984 at the UN international conference in New York, saying no to any form of imposition. We are decolonized. And because we know that colonization was a massacre, a crime against humanity, this allows us to have our own mindset in relation to Western French discourse,” explains Imhotep Bayala.

“Lumumba was killed by Belgium. Kwame Nkrumah was killed by England and the American CIA. Sékou Touré was killed by the French DGES. Amílcar Cabral was killed by the Portuguese. Thomas Sankara was killed by France. We don’t want to lose any more of our heroes,” he adds.

With Traore, the country has its first memorial to honor Sankara. The space, which also houses the revolutionary leader’s mausoleum, was inaugurated in May this year on the same site where the former president and his 12 colleagues were assassinated. Valentin Sankara celebrated in an interview published by Brasil de Fato: “The captain thought of all those who remained on October 15 to accomplish this. It is truly a joy for the families,” said Valentin.

Like Sankara’s brother, Luc Damiba, special advisor to the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, sees the current government as a continuation of the project that was interrupted in 1987. He highlights two episodes that took place precisely at the location where he is giving the interview, the Thomas Sankara Memorial.

He took power on the 14th, and on October 15, 2022, he came here, took up the torch of the revolution, and said he would continue the revolution that Sankara had started. So, it is the continuation of the revolution that is present today. Secondly, he agreed to rename Thomas Sankara and erect this mausoleum project in Thomas Sankara’s name. He rehabilitated Thomas Sankara’s memory. So every day, he quotes his words, quotes his memory, quotes his references, the work he did, and says he will do better.”

For storyteller and early childhood educator Mahi, Princess Kirikara, Traoré is carrying out an indisputable priority during Sankara’s four years in power: the certainty that revolution cannot triumph without the emancipation of women.

“Sankara foresaw the emancipation of women, and with Ibrahim Traoré, this is totally confirmed, because we see many women today who are not afraid to assert themselves in any profession. They assert themselves in all professions. You find women police officers, you find women who are at the head of various companies. And there are many women in government, which is very good. It is a message for young people, for us, and for children,” concludes Mahi.

This article was translated from an article originally published in Portuguese on Brasil de Fato.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/15/ ... his-death/

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Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man and His Revolutionary Legacy

Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 15, 2025
Weaponized Information


“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.”

— Thomas Sankara

Introduction

Thomas Sankara was not simply a political leader. He was the living embodiment of what it means to build revolution under siege, to govern not with privilege but with sacrifice, and to refuse the chains of debt, dependency, and despair crafted by imperialism for the Global South. In four short years—from 1983 until his assassination in 1987—Sankara transformed Burkina Faso from one of the most exploited corners of the world into a laboratory of revolutionary hope. He launched mass literacy programs, liberated women from feudal shackles, fought desertification, and made his country nearly self-sufficient in food production—all while refusing aid from the very imperialist institutions designed to keep Africa on its knees.

His government built schools, hospitals, railroads, and irrigation systems without falling into the traps of World Bank loans or IMF “assistance.” His words before the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa—denouncing debt as a form of neocolonialism—still thunder across generations of revolutionaries. His audacity, his discipline, and his devotion to the working and peasant classes of Africa made him a target—not only for his internal enemies, but for the global ruling class.

This is no neutral history. We do not judge Thomas Sankara by the standards of the imperialists or the comprador classes who assassinated him. We judge him by the standards of the colonized masses he fought for. We at Weaponized Information honor Sankara as he lived: upright, unbowed, and uncompromising. He was not a “benevolent reformer” or a “charismatic leader” in the liberal sense. He was a revolutionary who wielded power as a weapon of liberation—and paid the ultimate price for it.

This biography is written in that spirit. It is an attempt not just to remember Sankara, but to study him as a guide for the revolutionary struggles of our time. It is a tribute from the colonized and oppressed to one of their greatest sons.

Part I: Origins of a Revolutionary (1949–1966)

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born on December 21, 1949, in Yako, a dusty town in the northern reaches of what was then French Upper Volta. He came into a world defined by colonial degradation, where African life was cheap and African futures were chained to the fortunes of French imperial capital. His father, Joseph Sankara, had served in the French army during World War II—a reminder of the empire’s ability to conscript Black bodies to fight its wars while denying them dignity at home. His mother, Marguerite, nurtured in him a fierce spirit of independence.

Young Sankara witnessed the grinding poverty, feudal hierarchy, and racial humiliation that defined colonial life. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he refused to accept it as natural. From an early age, he showed signs of nonconformity: questioning authority, excelling academically, and pushing against the inherited fatalism of his social environment.

In 1962, he enrolled in a military academy in Kadiogo, Ouagadougou—the capital. There, he received a colonial education designed to produce obedient administrators for the French-controlled African states. But Sankara absorbed something different. In military discipline, he saw not a tool of colonial repression, but a possible instrument of liberation. At the academy, he was exposed to broader political ideas, including anti-imperialist currents sweeping the continent: the Algerian Revolution, Ghana’s independence under Kwame Nkrumah, and the writings of Frantz Fanon.

More crucially, Sankara’s brilliance earned him a scholarship to study in Madagascar in 1970. There, at the Antsirabe military academy, he encountered a volcanic political climate: student protests, labor strikes, and a leftist uprising against the neo-colonial government. In Madagascar, Sankara was radicalized. He devoured Marxist-Leninist literature, studied the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions, and witnessed firsthand the explosive power of mass mobilization.

By the time he returned to Upper Volta in 1973, Sankara was no longer merely a soldier. He was a revolutionary in uniform. A man convinced that colonialism was not a historical accident but a living system—and that liberation would require not polite reforms, but a social revolution led by the oppressed themselves.

Part II: A Soldier and a Revolutionary Mind (1966–1973)

Upon his return to Upper Volta in 1973, Thomas Sankara entered a country still shackled to the whims of French imperialism. The formal flag of independence had been raised in 1960, but the economic, political, and cultural realities of colonial domination remained deeply entrenched. The army, into which Sankara was integrated as a young officer, reflected these contradictions. It was a force trained to defend borders drawn by Europeans, to preserve elites installed by colonial compromise, and to discipline the poor, not liberate them.

But Sankara was not content to play the role assigned to him. He immersed himself in revolutionary study even within the barracks. He taught Marxism and anti-imperialist thought informally to soldiers and lower-ranking officers. He organized study circles and clandestine political discussions. For him, the military could be more than an instrument of repression — it could become a motor of transformation, provided it was ideologically purified and tied directly to the working class and peasantry.

During this period, Sankara began building alliances beyond the army. He forged strong relationships with militant trade unions, radical student groups, and peasant organizations. His growing reputation as an incorruptible patriot and a disciplined revolutionary made him stand out in a sea of cynical opportunists who dominated Voltaic political life.

In 1976, alongside other like-minded soldiers such as Blaise Compaoré and Jean-Baptiste Lingani, Sankara helped found the clandestine “Communist Officers’ Group” (Regroupement des officiers communistes, ROC). This underground revolutionary nucleus was committed to overthrowing neocolonial domination and creating a popular revolutionary government. It was a calculated risk: discovery could mean prison or death. But Sankara understood that the path to emancipation required the conquest of state power—not its avoidance.

By the late 1970s, as political crises deepened in Upper Volta and mass discontent simmered, Sankara’s dual reputation as a brilliant military strategist and a principled revolutionary placed him increasingly in the crosshairs — both of the Voltaic ruling class and their French patrons. Yet he remained steadfast, refusing every offer of personal advancement that required the abandonment of his revolutionary commitments.

The stage was being set. A new kind of leader — one shaped not by colonial universities or foreign capitals, but by Africa’s villages, fields, and working-class struggles — was preparing to step into history.

Part III: Rise of a Revolutionary Leader (1973–1983)

Throughout the 1970s, Thomas Sankara moved steadily from revolutionary organizer to a national figure of growing influence and controversy. His loyalty to the working classes, his refusal to enrich himself, and his clarity of purpose made him beloved among youth, workers, and peasants—but a dangerous threat to the neocolonial elites and their French backers.

In 1981, Sankara was appointed Secretary of State for Information under the military-led government of Colonel Saye Zerbo. It was a strategic opportunity, and Sankara used the position to promote transparency, denounce corruption, and advocate for radical reforms. But his revolutionary honesty quickly made him an internal enemy. Frustrated by the regime’s unwillingness to break with French neocolonialism, he resigned in protest in 1982, famously stating: “Misery and hunger are not prerequisites for dignity. We refuse to beg.”

His resignation electrified the masses and enhanced his reputation as a principled revolutionary. In 1983, after a series of chaotic shifts in the Voltaic government, Sankara was named Prime Minister under the short-lived presidency of Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo. From that post, Sankara intensified his criticism of the ruling order, meeting openly with Libyan, Cuban, and Ghanaian revolutionaries, and mobilizing a broad base of support across the country.

But the neocolonial powers moved swiftly. Under pressure from France and internal elites, Sankara was arrested and imprisoned on May 17, 1983. His arrest triggered mass uprisings across the country, especially among students, trade unionists, and junior soldiers. Demonstrations, strikes, and barricades erupted in Ouagadougou and beyond, demanding his immediate release.

On August 4, 1983, the tide turned. In a coordinated uprising led by Blaise Compaoré and other revolutionaries within the army, Sankara was freed and swept into power. The military barracks became the spark of a national revolution. The old colonial name “Upper Volta” was thrown into the dustbin of history. Sankara renamed the country Burkina Faso — “The Land of Upright People.” It was not a mere rebranding; it was a declaration of a new path: one of dignity, sovereignty, and popular revolution.

In one bold move, Sankara had broken the cycle of neocolonial subservience. He stood not as a puppet of the West, nor as a comprador in uniform, but as the living embodiment of the dreams of the colonized. The Burkina Revolution had begun.

Part IV: The August Revolution and Building the New Burkina Faso

With the successful August 4, 1983 uprising, Thomas Sankara and the Council of the National Revolution (CNR) launched one of the most ambitious and daring revolutionary projects of the late 20th century. Sankara did not seize power to occupy office. He seized it to dismantle the colonial state, root and branch, and to build a new society from below.

From the outset, the Burkina Revolution broke decisively with the formulas of Western-backed “development.” Sankara emphasized mass mobilization, self-reliance, and the dignity of labor. “He who feeds you, controls you,” he declared, inaugurating a national campaign for food self-sufficiency. In just four years, Burkina Faso doubled its wheat production, achieved near-complete food sovereignty, and dramatically reduced its dependence on imported staples.

The revolution placed women at the center of the struggle. Sankara banned forced marriages, criminalized female genital mutilation, and appointed women to high government positions. He created a Women’s Brigade in the revolutionary armed forces and insisted: “The Revolution cannot triumph without the liberation of women.” In a continent still scarred by patriarchy and feudal oppression, this was nothing short of seismic.

Environmental restoration was another front of struggle. Sankara initiated mass reforestation projects, building “green belts” to fight desertification. Millions of trees were planted. Local communities were organized to rehabilitate land and water resources. Environmental protection was framed not as a luxury, but as a revolutionary necessity.

Politically, the revolution decentralized power through the creation of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs)—popular assemblies at the village, neighborhood, and workplace level. These organs became schools of self-governance, education, and vigilance against counterrevolutionary activity. The CNR also dismantled the bloated bureaucracies of the old colonial state and rooted out corruption with militant discipline.

Sankara slashed the salaries of government ministers (including his own), sold off the fleet of government Mercedes Benz cars, and replaced them with humble Renault 5s—the cheapest car available in Burkina Faso. Symbolism mattered. Sankara lived modestly, refusing the privileges that so often rot revolutionary leadership from within.

Health and education were revolutionized. In a single week, over 2.5 million Burkinabé were vaccinated against meningitis, yellow fever, and measles—one of the fastest mass vaccination campaigns in African history. Primary school attendance skyrocketed. Literacy campaigns mobilized tens of thousands. The Revolution did not wait for foreign “aid”; it moved on the energy and creativity of its own people.

In every field, the Burkina Revolution advanced a simple but profound truth: that the colonized can build their own future without charity from their oppressors. Sankara’s government showed that a small, poor, landlocked African country—if guided by revolutionary principles and organized mass action—could stand tall in the face of global imperialism.

Part V: Sankara and the Global Stage (Internationalism and Confrontation with Empire)

Thomas Sankara understood that Burkina Faso’s revolution was inseparable from the wider struggle against imperialism worldwide. From the beginning, he cast the destiny of his small nation as bound up with the liberation of Africa and the Global South as a whole. His internationalism was not rhetorical—it was militant and practiced.

Sankara forged strong ties with revolutionary states and movements: Cuba under Fidel Castro, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, Ghana under Jerry Rawlings, Mozambique’s FRELIMO, Angola’s MPLA, and South Africa’s ANC. Burkina Faso became a training ground and safe haven for African revolutionaries, just as Guinea under Sékou Touré had been a generation earlier. Sankara viewed these alliances not as “diplomacy” but as building blocks of a future Pan-African socialist federation.

His speeches on the international stage electrified oppressed peoples and terrified imperialists. Most famously, in 1984 at the United Nations General Assembly, Sankara delivered a fiery denunciation of colonialism, racism, and capitalist exploitation. Speaking for the “wretched of the earth,” he lambasted the Western powers for their hypocrisy, called for the dismantling of apartheid, and reaffirmed the right of all peoples to self-determination.

In 1987, at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Addis Ababa, Sankara delivered what would become one of his most legendary interventions. He called for a collective African refusal to pay the odious foreign debts imposed by former colonial powers. “Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa,” he thundered. “Those who led us into debt were gambling… We cannot pay, and we will not pay!” His call to action was met with thunderous applause from the African masses—and deep alarm from Western financial institutions.

But Sankara’s clarity made him a marked man. His uncompromising stance against French neocolonialism, his refusal to be bought by “aid” programs, and his efforts to organize Africa into a collective revolutionary bloc threatened the very foundations of the postcolonial imperialist order.

In the eyes of empire, Sankara had committed the ultimate sin: proving that another path was possible—not just rhetorically, but materially and organizationally. A path based not on dependency, but on dignity. Not on subjugation, but on sovereignty. Not on capitalism, but on socialism.

The noose was tightening. And the forces of reaction were preparing to strike.

Part VI: Contradictions, Challenges, and Betrayal

Revolution is never a straight line. Even as Thomas Sankara and the Burkinabé people achieved extraordinary gains, contradictions within the revolutionary process began to sharpen. Some came from outside—the relentless pressure of imperialist encirclement, economic blockades, and covert operations. Others grew from within—the inevitable frictions of building socialism in a country battered by centuries of colonial underdevelopment.

The revolutionary tempo demanded sacrifice and discipline. But not all sections of the population, especially segments of the petty bourgeoisie and traditional elites, were willing to surrender their privileges. Discontent brewed among traders affected by anti-corruption campaigns, among landlords undermined by land reforms, and even among parts of the officer corps who resented Sankara’s push for egalitarianism within the military itself.

The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), designed to deepen popular power, sometimes fell prey to bureaucratic rigidity or local abuses of authority. Sankara acknowledged these problems openly, insisting on continuous self-criticism and correction. But the pressures were mounting—and not only from internal contradictions.

France, Côte d’Ivoire under Houphouët-Boigny, and other reactionary regimes viewed Sankara’s revolution as a virus that needed to be contained or destroyed. Subversion efforts escalated. Isolation on the international stage deepened. Economic sabotage intensified. And within the inner circles of power, opportunism began to surface.

At the center of this brewing counterrevolution was Blaise Compaoré—one of Sankara’s closest comrades during the August Revolution, but a man increasingly drawn to the siren songs of compromise and personal ambition. Western powers, sensing a crack in the revolutionary front, nurtured it quietly.

In the end, Sankara’s greatest vulnerability was not external. It was betrayal from within. Those who could not match his incorruptible spirit, who could not endure the discipline of revolutionary struggle, became the tools of imperial restoration.

The clock was ticking toward tragedy.

Part VII: The Assassination and the Immortal Legacy

On October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara was assassinated in a carefully orchestrated coup led by Blaise Compaoré. The man who had once marched beside him now became the instrument of his betrayal. In less than fifteen minutes, the dreams of the Burkina Revolution were drowned in blood.

Sankara was killed alongside twelve of his closest comrades in a hail of gunfire at the headquarters of the National Council of the Revolution. His body was hastily buried in an unmarked grave. Compaoré, backed by imperialist forces eager to restore neocolonial “normalcy,” seized power the same day. In speeches, Compaoré spoke of “rectifying the revolution.” In practice, he dismantled it, brick by brick, returning Burkina Faso to the fold of IMF programs, French tutelage, and comprador rule.

But revolutions are not so easily buried. Though Sankara’s physical body fell, his spirit refused to die. His speeches, writings, and deeds—crystallized in the memories of the people—continued to circulate across Africa and the world. His call for dignity, autonomy, and mass mobilization echoed through every village that remembered free vaccinations, through every field that remembered collective farming, through every school that remembered the spark of literacy.

Sankara’s assassination was not the death of an individual. It was the martyrdom of a revolutionary line. A line that sees the liberation of the colonized as non-negotiable. That understands that imperialism will destroy with one hand while pretending to offer “development” with the other. That insists that sovereignty without socialism is a lie.

Today, Thomas Sankara remains one of the clearest examples of revolutionary leadership in the era of neocolonialism. He demonstrated that the oppressed are not fated to beg at the tables of the rich. They can stand upright. They can build. They can resist—and they can win, even when victory is stolen, because the example itself continues to inspire.

In the fields of Burkina Faso, in the radical student movements of Africa, in the insurgent dreams of the working class worldwide, Sankara still walks. Upright. Unbent. Unbroken.

The Lessons of Sankara for the Global South Today

Thomas Sankara’s life was short, but his revolutionary impact stretches beyond the decades that have passed since his assassination. His commitment to self-reliance, dignity, and organized mass struggle offers a strategic guide for all movements resisting recolonization, technofascism, and the suffocating grip of global capital today.

He taught that true independence is impossible without economic autonomy. That debt is a weapon of recolonization. That sovereignty means taking control over food, water, health, education, and culture. That liberation is not handed down by elections or foreign “aid”—it is built from below, through mass mobilization and revolutionary organization.

Sankara understood that the fight against imperialism must be waged on every front—economic, cultural, ideological. He insisted that women must not simply be included in revolution, but must be among its leaders. He recognized that environmental degradation was not merely a technical issue but a political one—linked directly to colonial exploitation of land and resources.

Above all, Sankara rejected the false choices imposed by the imperialist world order. He showed that an African nation, even one with almost no wealth, could organize itself with the power of collective labor and revolutionary imagination. Burkina Faso under Sankara was proof that another world was not just possible—it was already being built.

Today, as new forms of empire tighten their grip—from militarized borders to structural adjustment 2.0 to the digital colonization of minds—the memory of Sankara stands as a battle cry. He reminds us that survival without dignity is not living. That freedom without socialism is just a new kind of bondage. That revolution is not a slogan—it is a process, a duty, and a necessity.

Thomas Sankara lives. In every peasant who demands land. In every worker who rejects exploitation. In every woman who refuses patriarchy. In every young rebel who chooses to organize rather than to kneel. Sankara lives—and the revolution he dreamed of remains unfinished. It is ours to complete.

Bibliography

Murrey, Amber, editor. A Certain Amount of Madness: The Life, Politics, and Legacies of Thomas Sankara. Pluto Press, 2018.
Peterson, Brian J. Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa. Indiana University Press, 2021.
Further Reading:

For deeper investigations into imperial sabotage against African revolutions, explore our article: Operation Persil: France’s Dirty War on Revolutionary Guinea.

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Thomas Sankara: Mystic of Integrity and Flame of Burkina Faso

Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 15, 2025
Ollantay Itzamná



On October 15, 1987, Captain Thomas Sankara’s life was cut short, but his spirit was elevated to the status of political mystique and his legacy was burned into the history of Africa and the world. More than a leader, Sankara was a prophet who conceived politics as an act of redemption and dignity, an «African Che» who transformed Upper Volta into Burkina Faso—the «Land of upright men».

Its mystique lay in the fusion of radical austerity and revolutionary ethics. He refused to inhabit palaces, drive luxury cars, and accept a salary beyond that of a captain, demonstrating that power can be a service and not a privilege. Her political philosophy focused on self-sufficiency (fighting hunger with mass agriculture and reforestation) and total emancipation (promoting feminism from the State and fighting tribal oppression).

A philosophical legacy against debt and neocolonialism

The crowning act of his thought was his speech before the Organization of African Unity (OAU), where he called for a united African front to reject the foreign debt, describing it as a «colonial instrument» designed to strangle people. This bold and deeply ethical stance encapsulates his vision for Africa: a vision of sovereignty, dignity and real unity, freed from the chains of economic neocolonialism.

For the world, his legacy is living proof that another way of governing is possible: one where the integrity of the leader is the first engine of social transformation, and where politics focuses on the most basic needs of the people (water, health, education) rather than in foreign capital.

The mystical call in times of genocide

Today, in a time of deep darkness where the term «genocide» resonates again and indifference seems to reign, the mystique of Sankara makes an urgent call to us:

Resignify dignity: Their life requires us to remember that the sovereignty of a people is not negotiated and that the life of every human being, especially that of the oppressed, has infinite value.

Abolish indifference: The same logic of economic plunder and debt that he fought continues to operate in structures that allow mass violence. Its ideals drive us to be the «Land of upright men» not only in our territory, but in our global consciousness.

Reaffirm common humanity: Sankara wanted to be «the heir of all the world’s revolutions», a symbol that the fight for justice is universal. In the shadow of the genocide, his spirit is a light that forces us to act, to be militants of peace with the same audacity with which he was a militant of the revolution.

His blood shed on October 15, 1987 was not an end, but the sap that continues to nourish the hope of a more just and dignified Africa —and a world—. May his memory instill in us the courage to live, like him, without fear and with the highest integrity.

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