Burkina Faso's Path to Sovereignty

By Kasabez Maakmaah

Part I: Democracy in Africa

Burkina Faso is once again being featured on the periphery of Western media outlets. If you’ve been following the developments here, you can guess the coverage is negative.

On April 2nd, 2026, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, President of Burkina Faso was interviewed by 6 journalists, 3 Burkinabé and 3 international (Togo, UK and Italy). He answered all kinds of questions on all kinds of topics for over 2 hours. From this extended interview, the Western media picked up on one quote only, “The people should forget about the question of democracy.”

While this declaration will obviously raise some eyebrows among those who have been trained to see the Western democratic model as the only path to freedom, justice, human rights, etc. We will get to talk more about President Traoré's full comments on democracy and the context of the present situation in certain African democracies. Before starting, let’s note that a lot deserves to be mentioned, considered and reflected upon from the full interview, which we will explore in this series of articles, of which this is the first. We will start by talking about democracy in Africa.

Military Rule?

In response to President Traoré's comments on democracy, German based DW News posted the following on social media,

Traore seized power in a coup in September 2022, overthrowing another junta that had itself taken control just nine months earlier. Since then, he has tightened his grip on power, suppressing opposition and banning political parties in January. He had initially promised a return to civilian rule, but later delayed elections, arguing that Burkina Faso remained too insecure because of ongoing Islamist insurgencies. Last year, the junta extended the transition period, allowing Traore to stay in office until 2029. His remarks suggest Burkina Faso is moving even further away from its earlier pledge to restore democratic governance.

This statement is true on its surface, however, Western media outlets are very intentional about the terms they use and the meaning they imply with them. By referring to Burkina Faso's government as a “junta” and its president “tightening his grip on power” instead of returning to “civilian rule” and “democratic governance”, the implications are significant:

1. Burkina Faso is in the hands of a military dictatorship.
2. The dictatorship has a “grip on power”, implying that they are holding onto power by forces of arms, against the will of the people.
3. If the people had their choice, they would choose a different leader.

One can go further to imply:

1. The people will be suffering from brutal and deadly crackdowns on any resistance.
2. They will need help from the international community to gain their freedom.

All this may seem insignificant if it’s just commentary coming from outside, however, as we often see, these kinds of claims can be used as a pretext to invade countries and topple their governments, supposedly to liberate the people. President Traoré has already survived up to around 20 assassination attempts and coup plots. 

Notably, a recent report by Human Rights Watch is now calling for international sanctions against Burkina Faso, which is already facing sanctions from ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States, of which Burkina Faso is a former member). Human Rights Watch is also calling for the International Criminal Court to charge Burkinabe government leaders with crimes against humanity. We will discuss more on this later in this series as it relates to Burkina Faso's ongoing fight against jihadist terrorists, but the point is the threats are real.

The success of propaganda often depends on public buy in or lack of resistance to the agenda of the propagandists. For example, last April, just once year ago, we witnessed a global mobilization to firmly declare “Hands Off Burkina Faso” in response to a US Marine General claiming the “junta regime” was using gold reserves to support itself, similarly implying in front of the US Senate that the gold is being used to buy weapons to suppress opposition. Let's examine the realities on the ground.

While Captain Traoré is obviously a military leader who came to power by military force, the question of whether military force is being used to subdue the civilian population still has to be asked before declaring his presidency military rule or dictatorship. Notably, on the night he took power, there were no casualties reported. His forces stormed the presidential palace and his predecessor fled the country. The public took to the streets to celebrate. Until today, he has not yet faced public resistance, protests or civil unrest. In fact, he is so widely celebrated throughout the country that, following last year’s comments by the American general, Burkinabé took to the streets by the thousands in cities and towns throughout the country to show their support. In no case can one see the presence of the military exercising crowd control. In no case can one find counter protests being organized. It’s conspicuous that almost exactly a year later, new propaganda is surfacing in a clear attempt to smear his public image.

Western Hypocrisy

As Western media targets President Traoré, let's look at a few other recent examples. For years, the United States antagonized and put sanctions on Venezuela, accused their leaders of rigging elections and calling their president illegitimate. Who can forget the raid on his compound earlier this year where he and his wife were “arrested” in their own country by a foreign military and brought to the US to face drug trafficking charges. Talk of liberating the Venezuelan people ended shortly thereafter as their vice-president took over the country and talks of elections or installing the “legitimately elected president” all ended as the new president decided to play ball with the United States and give them the influence over their oil resources that the former president refused. Interesting.

Meanwhile, back in Africa, in 2025 Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon was reelected again at over 92 years old and has now been president of Cameroon for 43 years. Following the election, and Biya being declared the winner, there were widespread protests. Government forces cracked down on opposition leaders, protestors and anyone who happened to be outside at the time. One opposition leader has died in prison, another has fled the country and Djeukam Tchameni, an organizer who helped lead the effort to monitor the election to bring about the will of the people is still in jail until now. If DW News, CNN, Human Rights Watch, etc. have made any noise about it, it was very hard to notice.

Where are the calls for international election monitors? Where are the declarations of illegitimacy of the official election results? Where are the calls for justice for the Cameroonian people?

The hypocrisy is evident and should be noted by the public now being presented with the noise around Burkina Faso.

Paul Biya just happens to be somewhat of a pioneer in a fairly widespread trend in African “democracies” of extending and eventually removing term limits for their leaders. It happens all across the continent. Western media makes no note of it. Maybe it's because these leaders, like the new president of Venezuela, have agreed to play ball with the “imperialists” as President Traoré calls them.

Another example is the disqualification of the main opposition leader in Benin last year ahead of elections. This all but guaranteed Romuald Wadagni, the chosen successor of the current president, to be the only potential winner. Subsequently, some of Benin's military revolted and attempted a coup. This coup attempt was foiled with assistance from neighboring Nigeria. Nigeria’s involvement coincided with a conversation between its president and the French president that same morning. By the way, Benin’s former colonial power, France, has also banned its main opposition leader from candidacy in its upcoming presidential election. Wadagni has since been declared the winner with 94% of the vote.

The trend we are seeing with “democracies” in Africa and elsewhere is that interest groups seem to be increasingly gaining control of electoral systems in these countries in order to rig the results in their favor. The choice of the people doesn't matter when a candidate representing the will and interests of the people never emerges.

President Traore speaks on Democracy

This brings our focus back to Burkina Faso and Captain Traoré's full comments on democracy. A Burkina Faso based journalist asked a question regarding the “Charter of the Revolution” adopted by the Burkina Faso government which, among other things, dissolved all political parties in the country indefinitely.

Reporter - Your Excellency, the Charter of the Revolution was recently adopted by the People's Legislative Assembly. This Charter gives you the opportunity to run in almost any election. Some see this as a kind of pathway towards power for life. What is your response to that?

President Traore - First of all, I don't know why people have brought back the issue of elections. No. Even the previous Charter already addressed that. It wasn't in the last vote that the issue of elections was added. That's old. People have brought it back up with certain things in mind. No, we're not even talking about elections yet. We have challenges, and we must overcome those challenges. That depends on us doing things our way. We can't afford to bend on this even a little.

The people need to forget about the question of democracy. And that will take work. We have to tell them the truth: democracy isn't for us. This kind of democracy these people are trying to wave in our faces, like, “Here it is! Democracy!” That doesn't interest us; we have no desire for it. Normally, if we’re talking about democracy in Africa, the one who comes to you talking about democracy, run from him. Democracy kills.

This is democracy. Is this what we want? Look at Libya, it's a prime example. They were living in peace. They were living in peace, water was free, there were so many free things. When people got married, they already had social benefits and everything. But today, Libyans everywhere wander around with jugs, searching for just a little water. Look at the misery they live in. How many hundreds of thousands of children have died? Is that democracy? Everywhere in the world they try to impose democracy, it's done in blood. May God spare us from this kind of democracy.

We have our own model; We aren’t searching for examples from anyone. We came to completely change the way we function, but above all, to change mentalities, so that the people open their eyes, see the world, and never again fall into this trap. Those people there, this democracy, it’s slavery. There is no democracy in this world. They create it when they want, and to establish it, they kill. A democracy that kills, we don’t want that kind of democracy. May God protect us from that kind of democracy. We are focused on our conquest, on rebuilding our foundations, and on the revolution. It is the only way for us to develop ourselves.

These words, taken in their full context, take Libya as a perfect example out of many throughout the history of the literal crusade by the West to force their ideology of “democracy” across the world. Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, was accused of being a dictator and in 2011, the US and France bombed them, while funding and arming al Qaeda and ISIS to overthrow the government, promising to free the people of Libya from the “tyrant”. Gaddafi was brutally murdered in the street, on camera, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton celebrated and gloated publicly. Libya has been torn apart by warring terrorist factions for the entire 15 years since then. This year, his son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who had been in hiding and was considered maybe the only person who could reunite the country, was assassinated.

Not only has Libya been torn asunder but the jihadist crisis that has gripped the Sahel region of Africa since around 2012 is a direct result of the West supporting known terrorists to “liberate” Libya in the name of democracy…… Most recently, on April 13, 2026, the French company Lafarge was convicted of funding ISIS in Syria. Lafarge is one of the biggest cement companies in the world and the biggest company in Syria. It was found, in a court, in France, that this had been ongoing with the knowledge and support of the French government. We can stop there  and we can say definitively that France is still funding terrorist activities and be confident that those funds are being shared with their affiliates who have been plundering the Sahel region for the past decade and a half. But let’s note that this is just the one company that has been convicted and we don’t know how many others are doing the same. 

The fact that French proxies are continuing to arm terrorist groups proves that the fallout from Gaddafi’s demise wasn’t just a tragic mistake, but indicative of a pattern.

This brings us back to the point of the outright hypocrisy of the West, which proclaims democracy and freedom, but will fund scoundrels to do the dirty work of destabilizing their opponents. They don’t bring their talk about democracy to kingdoms in the Middle East or sham democracies around the world that are willing to sell their countries out to Western interests. If President Traore was willing to sell out his people to France like his predecessors, no one in the West would be talking about him, just like no one talks about the “presidents for life” in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda, Djibouti, Israel, etc. It’s because Traore kicked out the Western backed fraud who kicked out the sham-president before him that he has now become a target of Western propaganda, assassination attempts, sanctions, human rights investigations, etc., like Gaddafi, Castro, Chavez, Sankara, Lumumba, Nkrumah, etc. History has shown that even when the people of a country fairly elect a leader they want, if that leader isn’t cooperating with the imperialists, the imperialist will use any means necessary to get their way.

Today, President Traore is once again the target of smear campaigns such as the recent report by Sudanese reporter for Sky News, Yousra Elbagir, who was among the reporters to interview President Traore on April 2nd**.** Her video report titled, ‘President for life’: Inside Traoré’s Burkina Faso, makes no attempt to hide her outright skepticism of Traore and the revolution in Burkina Faso, injecting her bias at every moment along the way. Toward the beginning of the report, she interviews some people at a rally in support of the President. She labels the group as vigilantes protecting Traore from opposition while no one is carrying a weapon and no opposition is present. Without finding a single voice in opposition to the President or stepping a foot outside the capital, she maintains her stance that Burkina Faso is headed toward either dictatorship or collapse at the hands of terrorists.

Who in their right mind has the privilege of interviewing the president of a country and instead of thanking him, publishes a hit piece? Such a person is not a cultured person.

Meanwhile, on her X page can be found the following repost regarding her native Sudan:

April 11th is seven years since pro-democracy protests forced the army to depose Omar AlBashir…but Sudan today is going through a devastating war and the former protesters now find themselves in the middle of it and far from the democratic Sudan they dreamt of…

The words of President Traore ring true again.

“Everywhere in the world they try to impose democracy, it's done in blood. May God spare us from this kind of democracy.”

Traore is criticized for moving the country’s focus away from democracy, elections, and political parties. He is accused of cracking down on opposition and the media. The reality is, even under the most oppressive regime, one will find protests erupt periodically. Where can it be found that Burkinabe are protesting their government? If he holds on to power by means of “the promotion and enforcement of manufactured narratives,” as Ms. Elbagir claims, she is insulting the intelligence and courage of over 23 million Burkinabe, implying they can’t manage even a single act of resistance. Does she think they are too dumb to see the truth or too afraid to speak out? Consider this same population rose up to depose Blaise Compaore in 2014 after 27 years under his rule.

In reality, Burkina Faso’s crackdown is against agents, infiltrators and agitators that are either paid or programmed by the West. These are the kinds of people who will exploit petty grievances among people, much like the slave traders and colonists of years past. In Burkina Faso, no doubt they are present, just like they are everywhere, but for some reason no one will stand behind them.

Considered one of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso, the “Land of Upright People” is being underestimated. In truth, it is a place rich in culture, values and integrity. It is a place built upon the tradition of kingships which have always been considered the legitimate authorities representing the people, while the government, since the days of independence, has been known to represent France. For the first time since Burkina Faso’s first revolutionary President, Thomas Sankara, Burkinabe have a president they can stand behind, and when a united people get behind something, they get behind it for real. Nothing is being manufactured for them. They are giving their young leader a chance to deliver on his promises and they are giving their support. He has yet to disappoint in word or in deed. May he live long and long live the revolution.

“Homeland or death. We will win!”