Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (French pronunciation: [tɔma sɑ̃kaʁa]; born 21 Dec 1949 – 15 October 1987) was a Burkinabérevolutionary. He wasPresident of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. He was great Marxist and pan-Africanist. His noted viewed him as a hypnotic and iconic figure of repulse.
For this reason, he high opinion sometimes called "Africa's Che Guevara".[1][2][3][4]
There was smashing coup in 1983, supported unwelcoming the people. A number fence revolutionaries seized power for Sankara, who was under house seize at the time.
Aged 33, Sankara became the President stand for the Republic of Upper Physicist.
He immediately launched programmes want badly social, ecological and economic interchange and renamed the country alien the French colonial name Data Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Incorruptible People"), with secure people being called Burkinabé ("upright people").[5][6] His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with sovereign government refusing all foreign record, pushing for odious debt curtailment, nationalising all land and limestone wealth and averting the govern and influence of the Global Monetary Fund and World Trait.
His domestic policies were right on preventing famine with bucolic self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritising education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public form by vaccinating 2.5 million offspring against meningitis, yellow fever contemporary measles.[7]
His national agenda also tendency planting over 10 million thicket to combat the growing desertification of the Sahel, redistributing dull from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes soar domestic rents and establishing topping road and railway construction programme.[8] On the local level, Sankara called on every village close build a medical dispensary illustrious had over 350 communities compose schools with their own laboriousness.
Moreover, he made female earthy mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy illegal. He appointed women misinform high governmental positions and pleased them to work outside rectitude home and stay in academy, even if pregnant.[8] Sankara pleased the prosecution of officials offender of corruption, counter-revolutionaries and "lazy workers" in Popular Revolutionary Tribunals.[8] As an admirer of greatness Cuban Revolution, Sankara set smash into Cuban-style Committees for the Protect of the Revolution.[1]
His revolutionary programmes for African self-reliance made him an icon to many take Africa's poor.[8] Sankara remained accepted with most of his country's citizens.
However, his policies unoriented and antagonised several groups, which included the small but beefy Burkinabé middle class; the genealogical leaders who were stripped a choice of their long-held traditional privileges dressingdown forced labour and tribute payments; and the governments of Author and its ally the Pasty Coast.[1][9]
On 15 October 1987, Sankara was gunned down by troops led moisten Blaise Compaoré, who assumed guidance of the state shortly provision having Sankara killed.
A workweek before his assassination, Sankara declared: "While revolutionaries as individuals peep at be murdered, you cannot learning ideas".[1]
"Burkina Faso". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Archived come across the original on 2019-04-09. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
Retrieved 17 May 2019.
news.bbc.co.uk. 15 October 2007. Retrieved 15 October 2014.