Meet Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina Faso’s retro revolutionary
Four decades ago a 34-year-old army captain from Burkina Faso stood before the UN General Assembly and demanded a new world order. The speech, which was watched eagerly by young people across west Africa, heralded the birth of a revolutionary icon sometimes called “Africa’s Che Guevara”. Back home Thomas Sankara, who had seized power in a coup the previous year, had embarked on a radical programme of national self-reliance. On the global stage, he sought to “anoint Burkina Faso as the Third World’s vanguard”, as America’s ambassador to the UN wrote.
Sankara was assassinated by his army colleagues just three years later. But his spirit lives on in Burkina Faso’s latest military ruler, Ibrahim Traoré, an army captain who took power in a coup in 2022 at the age of 34. At home Mr Traoré is trying to stem the spread of jihadist insurgency while reviving Sankara’s autarkic economic policies in what he calls a “progressive popular revolution”. Abroad he has become one of Africa’s most prominent champions of a multipolar world and the face of the tripartite Alliance of Sahel States (AES), an anti-Western regional bloc formed with neighbouring Mali and Niger last year.
As with his fellow military leaders in the Sahel, Mr Traoré’s overriding priority is to curb the spread of jihadism by military means, refusing any dialogue with the militants. It is hard to tell how that is going. The government appears to be in control of Ouagadougou, the capital, and its surroundings, where attacks are rare. But it is near-impossible to verify the regime’s claims of glorious victories elsewhere in the country, where it does not have a monopoly on violence.
All eyes on me
To ensure that such uncertainty does not dent his power, Mr Traoré brooks no dissent. Much more than in either Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso’s junta is a one-man show. All opposition activities are banned. Though the president initially promised to hand over to civilians by 2024, he is now set to remain in power until at least 2029. Almost two years after an attempted coup prompted Mr Traoré to purge the army, the security apparatus seems to be under his thumb. Critics, or Western-backed “enemies”, as Mr Traoré calls them, are either thrown in jail or sent to the front in the battle against jihadists.
He is careful to cultivate his image. On billboards across Ouagadougou he is shown opening factories and meeting foreign dignitaries. At the inauguration of Ghana’s president in January, Mr Traoré appeared bearing a sidearm along with his signature red beret and military gloves and was greeted with loud cheers. Russia, which dispatched military advisers to Ouagadougou shortly after he took power, may have helped boost his star appeal. The African Initiative, a Kremlin-linked media outlet, has made Burkina Faso the focus for its “soft-power efforts” in the region, explains Ulf Laessing, an expert on the Sahel region at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany.
Much of what Mr Traoré does is clearly intended to invite comparisons with Sankara, who is still idolised in Burkina Faso. “Thomas Sankara inspires us,” says Samuel Kalkoumdo, an adviser to the president. Like his idol, Mr Traoré is said to have declined his presidential salary and kept the humble military rank of captain. Next month he is set to inaugurate a mausoleum at the site where Sankara was murdered.
The parallels with Sankara go beyond surface-level posturing. Like Sankara, Mr Traoré seeks to boost economic self-sufficiency and root out corruption. Last year the young leader launched the country’s first state-owned bank. His government has nationalised two mines, threatened to withdraw licences from foreign companies, and seized gold from a Canadian firm. A flagship “agricultural offensive”, which aims to achieve food “sovereignty” by the end of the year, bans the export of staples including rice. The government is distributing free tractors to farmers.
The farming initiative has yet to make headway. But a tough and much publicised campaign against corruption appears to be bearing some fruit. One Western ambassador, who believes graft is on the wane, describes a recent case as “almost like a Stalinist show trial”. A local journalist reckons that corruption has declined because “they will humiliate you if they catch you.”
It unclear how popular Mr Traoré really is. Data from Afrobarometer, a pollster, show that in 2023 opposition to military rule had fallen further in Burkina Faso than in any African country bar Mali. But such sentiments are hardly reliable given the lack of an opposition or a free press. “Right now you have to follow,” says a journalist working for a state media outlet. “If not, you know where you are going.”
Eventually, the young leader’s uncompromising instincts seem more likely to damage the country than to fix it. The government hopes that its agricultural initiatives will fill the gap in food assistance left by Western aid cuts. But “if you want to practise farming, you need access to land,” notes an aid worker in Ouagadougou. Mr Traoré’s refusal to countenance any dialogue with jihadists makes that harder.
Nor does he seem receptive to criticism. In a fiery speech on April 1st Mr Traoré warned of a repeat of “the events of ‘87” (when Sankara was assassinated). Foreign powers, he suggested, were conspiring to topple him, requiring the arrest of yet more “traitors”. That does not bode well for Burkina Faso or the region. ■
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