Burkina Faso — A Narrative History of Post-Colonial Leaders (1960–2026)

The Land of Upright People.

At midnight on 5 August 1960, Maurice Yaméogo read a proclamation on the national radio: "I solemnly proclaim the independence of the Republic of Upper Volta." In the sixty-six years that followed, the country had eleven heads of state, and it became known for how often its people changed their rulers — and how. A general strike and an unarmed crowd brought down the first president in 1966. Soldiers governed for the next seventeen years, and one of them accepted an open election in 1978 that he very nearly lost. A 33-year-old captain, Thomas Sankara, renamed the country Burkina Faso and was killed on 15 October 1987 with twelve companions. His closest friend, Blaise Compaoré, ruled for twenty-seven years, until an uprising drove him into exile in 2014; a year later citizens and loyal soldiers defeated a coup within a week. Then a jihadist insurgency, born in the Sahel in 2016, drove some two million people from their homes, and in 2022 two coups brought the army back to power.

Burkina Faso: A Narrative History of Post-Colonial Leaders tells that story as a story — chronological, human and sourced. Six acts, named as the book names them: The Republic of Monsieur Maurice, The Soldiers' Republics, The Upright Man, The Long Rectification, From Insurrection to Insurgency, and The Captain's Sovereignty — to 28 September 2026, when Captain Ibrahim Traoré inaugurated the country's first national gold refinery.

Inside:

• The deep past — the iron furnaces of Douroula and the stone walls of Loropéni, the Mossi kingdoms and the Mogho Naaba, and the midnight proclamation of 5 August 1960
• The national emblem — Yennenga and the stallion; the motto "La Patrie ou la mort, nous vaincrons", restored in 2024; and the anthem, the Ditanyè
• Six illustrated acts — Yaméogo's one-party state and the march of 3 January 1966 for "bread, water and democracy"; Lamizana and the coups of 1980, 1982 and 1983; Sankara's revolution and the verdict of 2022; Compaoré's rectification, the killing of Norbert Zongo and the Black Spring of October 2014; Solhan and Inata, and the letter of 24 January 2022; Damiba's eight months and Traoré's transition — the departure of the French forces, the exit from ECOWAS and the Confederation of Sahel States, the war's civilian dead as human rights groups documented them, the conscription of critics and the dissolution of the parties
• The country beneath the presidents — millet, cotton and the rains, the "hoe and wage" migration to Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the architect Francis Kéré, FESPACO, the triple jumper Hugues Fabrice Zango, and the historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo
• Quotes from Burkina Faso's leaders, and 54 key-fact cards
• A chronology, a table of Burkina Faso's leaders, 65 source notes and a reader's guide of 108 entries
• Lessons in Leadership — what the country's best and worst moments teach those who lead, and an epilogue on the latest official data at the end of September 2026
• The recurring patterns — the street as kingmaker, the army as referee, sovereignty and its price, and the north at the edge

A clear, sourced introduction for anyone who wants to understand Burkina Faso and West Africa, and a country that has long been, in the book's words, "a laboratory for Africa's hardest questions": how a poor country can be sovereign, how soldiers can be kept out of politics, and how honesty in office can be made to last longer than one leader.

What you get: the book in PDF and EPUB in one ZIP file, DRM-free, instant download. Future updates are included with your purchase.