Thomas Sankara: They Assassinated Him After He Said This

Thomas Sankara became president of Burkina Faso at 33 and immediately began doing things no African president had done before — selling the government's luxury cars, cutting his own salary, riding his bicycle to cabinet meetings, and refusing loans from the IMF and the World Bank entirely. In four years he vaccinated 2.5 million children, planted 10 million trees, built over 700 kilometers of railway with no foreign money, outlawed forced marriages and polygamy, and created dedicated women's military units — the first African government to do so. Then on July 29, 1987, he stood in front of every head of state on the African continent at the Organisation of African Unity summit in Addis Ababa and told them that Africa's debt was not a financial problem. He told them it was colonialism continuing under a different name. He asked them to refuse repayment together. Not a single leader stood up to join him. Seventy-eight days later, on October 15, 1987, he was shot multiple times inside the Conseil de l'Entente headquarters in Ouagadougou. Twelve of his colleagues were killed alongside him. His body was buried the same night in an unmarked grave. His death certificate listed the cause as natural causes. TerraVox is about African history — the empires, the kingdoms, the uprisings most people never got taught. We stick to what actually happened and let it speak for itself. | Episode 16 Subscribe and turn on your notifications for the next episode — A NOTE ON THIS VIDEO — This channel is built on real, verified research, but no single video can hold the full complexity of any history. Some details are necessarily condensed to fit the format. Treat this as a starting point, not the final word — if something here grips you, go dig further. That's the whole point.