The world's youngest head of state who has seduced Putin

Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso)"Ibrahim Traoré is not a new Sankara, but he is a Sankaraist," says a teacher from a school in Bobo-Dioulasso. Following his assassination in 1987, the Burkinabe revolutionary leader, Thomas SankaraThe man who changed his country's colonial name—Alt-Volta to Burkina Faso, "the homeland of upright men"—has left behind a very strong current of anti-colonial thought. This thought defends, above all, the dignity of the African people and "cooperation with all the peoples of the world," in opposition to the "image of the beggar" that the West had imposed through development aid.

Now, the Russia-Africa summit, held in St. Petersburg last weekHe delivered a speech that will go down in the history of Pan-Africanism and the new international relations in the Sahel. The head of state and transitional president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, popularly known as IB, gave a speech that has gone viral on social media. "How can it be that with the wealth we have, we are the poorest continent?" Traoré asked Vladimir Putin and 17 other African heads of state.

The recent coup in Niger and the latest political developments in the region –marked by anti-French protests and a rapprochement with Moscow– help to put things into perspective.

From captain to transitional president

Captain IB led a coup on September 30, 2022, against Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, becoming the world's youngest head of state. At 34, the same age at which Sankara came to power, also through a coup in 1983, the similarities were striking. Since then, IB has never removed his military uniform and has revived Sankara's motto in all his public appearances: "Fatherland or death. We will win!"

A geology graduate, he belongs to the generation of young military officers trained at the Georges-Namoano Academy, a far less glamorous training school compared to the Kadiogo Military Academy (PMK), where Damiba and the vast majority of Burkinabe army high-ranking officers studied. Upon assuming power, he implemented highly popular measures, such as maintaining his captain's salary and requisitioning all the supplies from the ministries. pickups that were used more for personal than professional reasons and to transfer them to the army. Because, unlike Damiba, IB presented himself as a military head of state with the sole objective of reconquering the national territoryOn May 4th, he recounted his combat experiences as a MINUSMA soldier in Mali in 2018 to national television (RTB), where a terrorist group infiltrated the force, remarkably disguised as UN peacekeepers. However, a week before his television interview, in the northern city of Karma, a purported Burkinabe army battalion had executed 150 people, including children. This incident severely undermined his credibility.

"Yesterday I saw on television that A European official said they had uranium reserves for the present and also for the future.“I was wondering what Niger’s present situation was, right now,” explains the teacher from the Bobo-Dioulasso school. “That’s how exploitation has always worked; we’re left with nothing, looking outward,” he concludes. Traoré is an answer to that waiting. In February 2023, he expelled the French army from Burkina Faso and called the Burkina Faso people Patria, a popular militia of at least 50,000 people who operate both alongside the army and independently, and are distributed throughout the country. Wagners"Every time he has been accused of collaborating with Russian mercenaries, he has denied it."

A revolutionary and Africanist imaginary

On the other hand, Ibrahim Traoré has managed to form a civilian government that includes historical figures from the Sankarist revolution, such as the former prime minister and lawyer Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla, who created a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) while studying in France in 1983. Just a month ago, he met with the International Monetary Fund, which he accused of "making our societies sick."

In Burkina Faso, talking back to your elders is an insult. Hierarchy, whether by age or military rank, is sacred. Traoré begins his speech in Russia by apologizing before speaking. He knows he is the youngest in the room and that it would be disrespectful not to. "There are African leaders who are puppets of the West," he says. sentenced in St. PetersburgBut this isn't the first time he's apologized. Right after the coup, he met with ministers and social representatives: "Before we begin, I apologize. I know I haven't slept for three days, and I'm young."

Traoré controls only 40% of the territory. The beginning of 2023 has been the deadliest in the country since the war on terror began, and the number of at least 2 million internally displaced people due to the violence remains unchanged. But he has managed to gain the population's forgiveness and support.