Burkina Faso

A landlocked country of the Mossi plateau, renamed by a revolutionary who governed for four years and is still argued about. The Mossi kingdoms resisted Islamic conquest for centuries and fell to France only in 1896. The colony of Upper Volta was created in 1919, dissolved in 1932 with its territory divided among neighbours - which made its dense population directly available as forced labour for Ivorian plantations - and reconstituted in 1947 after chiefs lobbied for it. Independence came in 1960. Thomas Sankara took power in 1983 at thirty-three and in four years vaccinated millions of children, planted ten million trees against the advancing desert, banned female genital cutting and forced marriage, appointed women to government in unprecedented numbers, sold the state car fleet and refused foreign aid he considered a leash. He renamed the country Burkina Faso, land of upright people, combining Moore and Dioula words on purpose. He was assassinated in 1987 in a coup led by his closest colleague, Blaise Compaore, who then governed for twenty-seven years. Jihadist insurgency has controlled large areas since 2015. Ouagadougou is the capital and hosts Africa's largest film festival. The country has about twenty-three million people. Its residents are called Burkinabe, a term Sankara coined using a third language, Fula. Cotton and gold are the main exports. The ruins of Loropeni are a World Heritage site. Sankara's body was exhumed in 2015 and his killers convicted in 2022, with Compaore sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. The country is landlocked and depends on ports in four neighbours.

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