Ideologies Of Thomas Sankara And Their Impact On Burkina Faso

Ideologies have run countries into and out of war there have been part of man since the first recorded documents and until this day and age, the new and the old ideologies still emerge through the political leaders who try and enforce them to the people in their countries. Before a full analysis on Burkina Faso’s ideologies under the Thomas Sankara one must try and understand the history of how they came to be on that position. The country is a francophone, with French being the main administrative language used in schools and businesses. Burkina Faso is located in the west plains of Africa and it is a land locked country.

The country shares its borders with six other countries Benin being on the south east, with Ivory Coast to the south west, Ghana and Togo to the south, Niger to the east and Mali to the north. Before the country was called the Republic of Upper Volta, although they got their independence in the fifth of August 1960 they did not change the name of the country until it was changed by the fifth president Thomas Sankara on the fourth of August 1984 this was to symbolize the rebirth of the country he named it Burkina Faso that meant the land of upright man. The concentration of this thesis is going to be the ideologies implemented by President Thomas Sankara and how he went about making changes for the new independent country of Burkina Faso and the approach he used to implement them, then the analysis goes further on the negative and positive effects his ideologies had on the economics of his country. Also one must ask that was it in the form of violence or it was a smooth sail with the changes he implemented. Sankara was a pro people he was more of a leftist faction as his ideologies focused on social, gender, economic and ecological changes. He wanted to remove the concept of reliance and make his country man self-reliant. Thomas Sankara He was born in 1949 on the twenty-first of December in a place called Yako in the Republic of Upper Volta. His full name was Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara and he was the third child out of ten children to Joseph and Marguerite Sankara. His father was one of the important military components so as a child Sankara enjoyed the privileges of being the son of a high ranking officer. At the age of 17 in 1966 he attended the military academy.

In 1972 he returned back to his home the Republic of Upper Volta to join the border wars between his nation and the Mali Nation where they were Victorious. From that war Thomas emerged as a hero as he had an outstanding performance. In 1976 he was made the commander of the military training center in a place called Po. This is where he met of the comrades that will be on his side to his rise these where people like Blaise Compaoré, Henri Zongo and Jean-Baptiste Boukary together with Sankara they became known as the “Communist Officers Group” Into the Presidency seatBefore Thomas Sankara was a president, they came one before him in 1983 his name was Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo he also went into power through a coup d’état and he made Sankara a Prime minister and after some allegations of Sankara meeting up with the son of the French president he was demoted and put under house arrest. Not that long in the same year another coup d’état was implemented by one of the members of the Communist officers group Blaise Comaoré to remove Ouédraogo and he elected his former friend and comrade Thomas Sankara on the fourth of august 1983 as the new leader.

At the age of 33 Thomas Sankara began his career as the new President of Upper Volta which still had its colonial name at the time. The idea of self-sufficiency He was a revolutionary he tended to fall towards the Marxist views or ideologies, a president for the people usually referred to as a pro people revolutionary and he also was a pan Africanist. He took inspiration from the likes of the Cuban President Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In 1984 fourth of august he changed the name of the country into Burkina Faso as it was one of his revolutionary ideas, as he believe that the idea of revolution is the arch-nemesis of imperialist ideologies (Prairie,2007). This was also meant to be a sign of rebirth, breaking away from the western ways. Sankara believed that his country many suffered from a dependency sydrom and he wanted he wanted to eradicate that as in his states “Our country produces enough to feed us all. Alas, for lack of organization, we are forced to beg for food aid. It's this aid that instills in our spirits the attitude of beggars”.