Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (21 December 1949 – 15 October 1987) was a Burkinabé military officer, politician, Marxist and pan-Africanist revolutionary who served as the first president of Burkina Faso from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. Sankara previously served as the fifth prime minister of Upper Volta from January to May 1983.
After Sankara was appointed Prime Minister of the Republic of Upper Volta in 1983, he disputed with the sitting government and was placed under house arrest, during which a group of revolutionaries seized power on his behalf in a popular coup later that year.
Following the coup, Sankara, then 33, became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta and launched an unprecedented series of social, ecological, and economic reforms that were part of what he referred to as the people's democratic revolution. In 1984, Sankara oversaw the renaming of the country as Burkina Faso ('land of the upright people'), and personally wrote its national anthem. His foreign policy centered on anti-imperialism and self-sufficiency, and he rejected loans and capital from such organizations as the International Monetary Fund. However, he welcomed some foreign aid in an effort to boost the domestic economy and diversify sources of assistance.
His domestic policies included famine prevention, agrarian expansion, land reform, and suspending rural poll taxes, as well as a nationwide literacy campaign and vaccination program to reduce meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Sankara's health programmes distributed millions of doses of vaccines to children across Burkina Faso. His government also focused on building schools, health centres, water reservoirs, and infrastructure projects. He combatted desertification of the Sahel by planting more than 10 million trees. Socially, his government enforced the prohibition of female circumcision, forced marriages, and polygamy. Sankara reinforced his populist image by ordering the sale of luxury vehicles and properties owned by the government in order to reduce costs, and refusing to use his office's air conditioning. He established Cuban-inspired Committees for the Defense of the Revolution purportedly to serve as a new foundation of society and promote popular mobilization. His Popular Revolutionary Tribunals prosecuted public officials charged with graft, political crimes and corruption, considering such elements of the state counter-revolutionaries. Amnesty International criticised his government for alleged human rights violations, such as arbitrary detentions of political opponents.
Sankara's revolutionary programmes and reforms for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa's poverty-stricken nations, and the president remained popular with a substantial majority of his country's citizens, as well as those outside Burkina Faso. Some of his policies alienated elements of the former ruling class, including tribal leaders, and the governments of France and its ally, the Ivory Coast.
On 15 October 1987, Sankara was assassinated by troops led by Blaise Compaoré, who assumed leadership of the country shortly thereafter. Compaoré retained power until the 2014 Burkina Faso uprising. In 2021, he was formally charged by a military tribunal with the murder of Sankara and found guilty.
Early life
Thomas Sankara was born Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara on 21 December 1949 in Yako, French Upper Volta, as the third of ten children to Joseph and Marguerite Sankara. His father, Joseph Sankara, a gendarme, was of Silmi–Mossi heritage, while his mother, Marguerite Kinda, was of direct Mossi descent. He spent his early years in Gaoua, a town in the humid southwest to which his father was transferred as an auxiliary gendarme. As the son of one of the few African functionaries then employed by the colonial state, he enjoyed a relatively privileged position. The family lived in a brick house with the families of other gendarmes at the top of a hill overlooking the rest of Gaoua.
Sankara attended primary school at Bobo-Dioulasso. He applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and excelled in mathematics and French. He went to church often and, impressed with his energy and eagerness to learn, some of the priests encouraged Thomas to go on to seminary school once he finished primary school. Despite initially agreeing, he instead took the exam required for entry to the sixth grade in the secular educational system and passed. Thomas's decision to continue with his education at the nearest lycée, Ouezzin Coulibaly (named after a pre-independence nationalist), proved to be a turning point. He left his father's household to attend the lycée in Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's commercial centre. There, Sankara made close friends, including Fidèle Too, whom he later named a minister in his government, and Soumane Touré, who was in a more advanced class.
His Roman Catholic parents wanted him to become a priest, but he chose to enter the military. The military was popular at the time, having just ousted Maurice Yaméogo, the first but unpopular president of the new republic.
Many young intellectuals viewed the military as a national institution that might potentially help to discipline the inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy, counterbalance the inordinate influence of traditional chiefs, and generally help modernize the country. Acceptance into the military academy was accompanied by a scholarship; Sankara could not easily afford the costs of further education otherwise. He took the entrance exam and passed.
He entered the military academy of Kadiogo in Ouagadougou with the academy's first intake of 1966 at the age of 17. While there he witnessed the first military coup d'état in Upper Volta, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana (3 January 1966). The trainee officers were taught by civilian professors in the social sciences. Adama Touré, who taught history and geography, was the academic director at the time and known for having progressive ideas, although he did not publicly share them.
He invited a few of his brightest and more political students, among them Sankara, to join informal discussions outside the classroom about imperialism, neocolonialism, socialism and communism, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, the liberation movements in Africa, and similar topics. This was the first time Sankara was systematically exposed to a revolutionary perspective on Upper Volta and the world. Aside from his academic and extracurricular political activities, Sankara also pursued his passion for music, playing the guitar in a band called Tout-à-Coup Jazz.
In 1970, 20-year-old Sankara went for further military studies at the military academy of Antsirabe in Madagascar, from which he graduated as a junior officer in 1973. At the Antsirabe academy, the range of instruction went beyond standard military subjects, which allowed Sankara to study agriculture, including how to raise crop yields and better the lives of farmers. He took up these issues in his own administration and country. During that period, he read profusely on history and military strategy, thus acquiring the concepts and analytical tools that he would later use in his reinterpretation of Burkinabe political history. He was also influenced by French leftist professors in Madagascar. Their intellectual influence on him was later superseded by that of Samir Amin, whose concepts of auto-centered development and delinking from the global capitalist economy influenced him deeply (they were personal friends as well). Thomas Sankara's own speeches and works also show that his analytical strengths went beyond merely applying Cuban solutions or Amin's ideas. Beyond Marxism, he also drew from religious sources (both the Bible and the Quran were among his favourite readings). His focus on the peasantry, developed independently from both Amin and Mao Zedong, was especially important and influenced many in Burkina Faso and also later in other African countries.Adam Mayer: Military Marxism: Africa's Contribution to Revolutionary Theory, 1957-2023, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2025, pp. 138-146
Military career After his basic military training in secondary school in 1966, Sankara began his military career at the age of 19. A year later, he was sent to Madagascar for officer training at Antsirabe, where he witnessed popular uprisings in 1971 and 1972 against the government of Philibert Tsiranana. During this period, he first read the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, which profoundly influenced his political views for the rest of his life.
Returning to Upper Volta in 1972, he fought in a border war between Upper Volta and Mali by 1974. He earned fame for his performance in the conflict, but years later would renounce the fighting as 'useless and unjust', a reflection of his growing political consciousness.
In 1976, he became commander of the Commando Training Centre in Pô. During the presidency of Colonel Saye Zerbo, a group of young officers formed a secret organization called ROC, the best-known members being Henri Zongo, Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani, Blaise Compaoré and Sankara.
Government posts Sankara was appointed Minister of Information in Saye Zerbo's military government in September 1981. Sankara differentiated himself from other government officials in many ways, such as biking to work every day, instead of driving in a car. While his predecessors would censor journalists and newspapers, Sankara encouraged investigative journalism and allowed the media to print whatever it found. This led to publications of government scandals by both privately owned and state-owned newspapers. He resigned on 12 April 1982 in opposition to what he saw as the regime's anti-labour drift, declaring 'Misfortune to those who gag the people!' ().
After another coup (7 November 1982) brought to power Major-Doctor Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, Sankara became Prime Minister in January 1983. But he was dismissed a few months later, on 17 May. During those four months, Sankara pushed Ouédraogo's regime for more progressive reforms. Sankara was arrested after the French President's African affairs adviser, , met with Col. Yorian Somé. Henri Zongo and Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani were also placed under arrest. The decision to arrest Sankara proved to be very unpopular with the younger officers in the military regime. His imprisonment created enough momentum for his friend Blaise Compaoré to lead another coup.
Presidency
A coup d'état organized by Blaise Compaoré made Sankara President on 4 August 1983 at the age of 33. The coup d'état was supported by Libya, which was at the time on the verge of war with France in Chad (see history of Chad).
Sankara identified as a revolutionary and was inspired by the examples of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and Ghana's military leader Jerry Rawlings. As President, he promoted the 'Democratic and Popular Revolution' (, or RDP). The ideology of the Revolution was defined by Sankara as anti-imperialist in a speech on 2 October 1983, the (DOP), written by his close associate Valère Somé. His policy was oriented toward fighting corruption and promoting reforestation.
On 4 August 1984, the first anniversary of his accession, he renamed the country Burkina Faso, meaning 'the land of upright people' in Mooré and Dyula, the two major languages of the country. He also gave it a new flag, new coat of arms, and wrote a new national anthem (Ditanyè).
Council of the Revolution When Sankara assumed power on 4 August, he named the leadership of the country the Council of the Revolution (CNR). This was a way for Sankara to signal that he was going to try for political and social change. The CNR was composed of both civilians and soldiers, all ordinary people. But the member count was secret for security reasons and known only to Sankara and others in his inner circle.