Why Burkina Faso’s late revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara still inspires young Africans ( QZ.COM)

‘…Sankara’s visionary leadership turned his country from a sleepy West African nation with the colonial designation of Upper Volta to a dynamo of progress under the proud name of Burkina Faso (“Land of the Honorable People”). He led one of the most ambitious programs of sweeping reforms ever seen in Africa. It sought to fundamentally reverse the structural social inequities inherited from the French colonial order.

These inequities left a majority of marginalized, mostly rural, poor and women, at the bottom of society, often under the exploitation of a minority of bureaucrats, businessmen, military officers and traditional chiefs. Sankara focused the state’s limited resources on the marginalized majority in the countryside. When most African countries depended on imported food and external assistance for development, Sankara championed local production and the consumption of locally-made goods…’

*image from http://thomassankara.net

• Africa Needs a Mental Revolution not Aid
• How to make Africa work for the many, not just the few