[Applause] In the heart of West Africa, a quiet rebellion is raging. And at the center of it all is a young soldier with revolution in his voice and Thomas Sankara in his blood. He came to power through a coup detar, but not the kind the West supports.
Not the kind backed by IMF loans or photo ops in Paris. In just months, he did what few African leaders have dared to try. expelled the French military, tore up military agreements, cut ties with Western financiers, and called out decades of neocolonialism masked with freedom.
To his supporters, he's the second coming of Thomas Sankara. To his enemies, he's a dangerous incident with pan-African agenda, and now they call him dangerous. Ibrahim Trou isn't just changing his country.
He's challenging the global order and inspiring a new wave of African defiance. From Bukina Faso to the Sahel to the rest of the continent. His name is chanted by the defiant and feared by the powerful.
But who exactly is Ibrahim Trou? What does he want and why is the West scrambling to contain his rise? To understand Ibrahim Trou, you need to understand the land he comes from.
A country that has buried more revolutions than any other on the continent. Bukina Faso, formerly Upper Vulta, was renamed by Thomas Sankara, the iconic anti-imperialist who ruled in the 1980s. Bkina Faso means land of upright people.
But since Sankara's assassination in 1987, orchestrated with foreign complicity, the country has been anything but upright. Over the past decade, Bkina Faso has cycled through five heads of state, weathered multiple coups, and seen large parts of his territory fall to jihadist insurgents despite millions of dollars in western security support. In the midst of the chaos emerged Captain Ibrahim Trou, a soldier trained in the University of Wagadugu and a seasoned artillery officer.
He served in the northern Sahel where villages were routinely torted by terrorists and citizens left unprotected by the state. But unlike many in the officer class, Trayor didn't just take orders. He started asking questions.
Why, despite billions in aid, was Bukinaasu losing territory every week? Why were French troops stationed in the country if attacks were only growing? Why was the country consistently topping lists of the world's most neglected displacement crisis with nearly 10% of its population forced to flee their homes due to violence and insecurity?
And why were the nation's minds being drained by foreign companies while citizens couldn't access basic needs? No sacrifice will be too great to take this country out of the situation in which it finds itself. So our commitment is for a return to peace and our compass will always be the people.
This wasn't just a coup. It was a declaration of disobedience. Trrow reframed it as a rectification of the previous military administration led by Paul Henry Damiba whom many accused of being too cozy with the west and too hesitant to break old ties.
With no background in politics and no financial elite behind him, Trouore leaned on something much older, Bkina Bay patriotism and the spirit of Sankara. He began echoing Sankara's speeches, nationalizing narratives, and urging youth to rise, not with weapons, but with tools, imagination, and hope. But hope alone isn't what makes the West nervous.
It's what came next that turned Trore into a geopolitical threat. Since gaining independence in 1960, according to data from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, Bukina Faso has seen more coups than any other African nation. A whooping nine successful coups with at least a dozen failed attempts.
In 1966, Colonel Sangul Lazima overthrows President Maurice Yamo after mass protests against austerity and authoritarianism. France keeps close diplomatic ties, no sanctions, no outrage. In 1980, Colonel Sai Zabo topples Lameisana in another military coup.
Another military man, another promise of reform, but the economy stalls and foreign aid becomes the lifeline. In 1982, Major Dr Jean Batist Dogo overthrows Zabo, promising reform. In 1983, Captain Thomas Sankara, just 33 years old, takes power in a revolutionary coup.
He slashes government wastage, promotes local industries, and launches a war against corruption, illiteracy, and foreign control. In 1987 comes blaze compound, Sakara's closest ally, overthrows and assassinates him in a Francebacked coup, ushering in almost three decades of authoritarian rule, a pivot to the west and neoliberal compliance. In comes 2014.
Compare is ousted by a popular uprising after attempting to change the constitution to extend his rule. He flees to Kivvoir. His French allies fall silent.
In 2022 January, leftand Colonel Paul Henry Damiba overthrows the civilian government of President Roore, citing a failure to contain a jihadist insurgency. But he keeps close ties with France, keeps their troops, keeps their contracts. And in 2022 September, Captain Ibraim Trou overthrows Damiba in a counter coup, accusing him of betraying revolutionary ideals and protecting foreign interests.
Despite all these coups and counter coups, everything changed for the country in 1987. That's when Thomas Sankara was gunned down and ousted in a coup plotted by his closest ally Bla1 Compare. The revolution that once threatened French mining contracts and western dominance in Africa was silenced and a puppet regime was installed.
For 27 years, Compare ruled with the invincible to the naked eye approval of Western powers. Bkina Faso opened its gold fields to foreign corporations, privatized state industries, and France freak was in full control. Bukina Faso became what scholars called a semisovereign state.
Outwardly independent but internally guided by external levers. Born in 1988, a year after Sankara's assassination, Ibrahim Trou grew up under the Compare government. But unlike many of his generation who fled abroad or retreated into silence, Troure chose to serve.
What shaped him wasn't just military doctrine, but the realities of war in the Sahel. Since 2015, Bukinina Faso had faced a violent insurgency led by al-Qaeda linked and ISIS affiliated groups. He served in some of the hardest hit regions, Lurum, Yatena, and Sum where state authority had collapsed and French forces present in the country under operation Bahan rarely intervened directly to protect civilians.
He like Sankara before him began seeing the war on terror not as a security partnership but as a cover for neoc colonial extraction. He began to question his own side. Something didn't add up.
Missions were underfunded despite years of foreign military aid. Intelligence on terrorist movements were often withheld or delayed. French forces in the region seemed more interested in guarding mining corridors than protecting civilians.
The contradiction became too loud to ignore. In 2022, while serving under leftand Colonel Damiba transitional government, Troure grew disillusioned. Damiba had promised a new direction but had refused to cut ties with France.
French troops remained in their borders. Agreements stayed secret and the people's suffering worsened. Troure listened and when he marched on the capital in September 2022 with loyalist units, it wasn't just a coup against Damiba.
It was a coup against the system. An unknown 35year-old had just ousted a French-leaning general and declared that Bukinaaso would reclaim its destiny. Fast forward to today.
Ibrahim Trou has openly embraced Sankara's legacy, igniting a revival of Panaffrican pride, an anti-colonial sentiment in Bukinaaso and beyond. In the colonial playbook, there's an unwritten rule. You can rebel, but only within the lines.
Ibrahim Trou didn't just step outside the lines, he tore the whole page out. Within just four months of taking power, he expelled the French military from Bukina Faso, ending operation Sabre, a counterterrorism force housed at a base near the Wagadugu airport. He also terminated a 1961 military agreement that allowed French forces to intervene at will in Bkina's internal affairs, a relic of colonial era cooperation in quotes, deals still active across Franophhone Africa.
[Music] [Music] terrorism. [Music] Afric [Music] for translation. The empire just got kicked out.
Trrow didn't stop there. He suspended and shut down French state media outlets like Radio France International and France 24, accusing them of broadcasting disinformation and destabilizing narratives. He banned French NOS's involved in what he called intelligence gathering under the mask of development.
Bkina Faso produces over 70 tons of gold per year, making it among top five largest gold producers in Africa. But more than 90% of that wealth is controlled by foreign companies, mostly Canadian, British, Australian, and French. Trore's administration began auditing all mining contracts, reviewing concessions signed under Compare and Kabor, and called out the gold drain that left the country underdeveloped while European stock markets profited.
At the same time, Trout also got plunged in a different kind of war. One waged in newsrooms thousands of miles away. The minute he took power, Western media outlets unleashed a barrage of labels.
Hunter leader, Putin proxy, militant captain, rising threat. But here's what they often left out. That Trayor's rise came after the total collapse of trust in westernbacked governments.
Instead of analyzing what brought him to power, they focused on painting him as the latest African strongman. After his government had suspended French media, the Western press responded with outrage. But here's the contradiction.
In a country where trust can mean the difference between survival and collapse. Information isn't neutral, it's tactical. This is why Bkina's government intensified its crackdown on foreign media with a zero tolerance policy towards biased reporting.
After Humans's Rights Watch alleged that Bukinab troops massacred civilians in two northern villages in 2024, the government swiftly suspended outlets like the BBC, Voice of America, and Human's Rights Watch itself. Authorities also banned the Guardian, Lemon, TV5, Mond, Devela, and several others, accusing them of an orchestrated media campaign to discredit the armed forces. All their websites were blocked until further notice.
Yet, Troure has been gaining local support with citizens, seeing him as a protector from external manipulation and internal chaos. But even think tanks and analysts joined the fry, the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, and others published opeds warning of autocracy, foreign influence, and regional instability. Yet many of these same institutions receive funding from western defense contractors and governments with a stake in Sahel geopolitics raising questions of conflict of interest.
Control of information is control of perception and perception shapes policy. If trou is seen as a liberator, he gains international sympathy. If he's painted as rogue, he becomes a justification for sanctions, isolation, or worse.
This is why the media war matters and in this sense trou was already under siege long before a shot was fired. What truly frightens the west is trou's vision of abukinaasu and a wider Africa free from foreign dependency. His policies echo Sankara's philosophy of self-sufficiency, food security, and military independence.
For decades, Western economies thrived off of Africa's dependence. Troures Bkina Faso threatens that economic model serving as an inspiration for African countries longing for real independence. Then came the coup and assassination attempts.
In December 2023, rumors of an attempted ouster of Captain Troules circulated widely, though never officially confirmed. Diplomatic sources cited increased US satellite surveillance over Wagadugu around the same period. In response, Bukin Faso's elite presidential guard expanded from 800 to over 2,500 personnel within just 6 months.
A senior Bukinab officer speaking anonymously reportedly told Yun Aick, "We are not naive. We remember what happened to Sankara. " Tensions further escalated recently when US Afric commander General Michael Langley accused Troure of diverting national gold reserves to finance his own security rather than the public welfare.
The usual historical tactic to manufacture consent for an invasion. In a rejoinder, the Bukin government dismissed the statement as imperial propaganda and released a public audit denying the allegations. Two years before this, Mkina Faso was suspended from Echoas alongside Mali and Nijair under the banner of restoring supposed democratic order.
This triple suspension coincided with the formation of a new Sahelian alliance named the Alliance of Sahel states or AES for short between three states focused on mutual defense, self-determination and expulsion of foreign military presence. While western powers have labeled these states paras, surveys and expert analysis suggests strong public support in Bukinaaso for deeper regional integration with the neighboring Sahel countries despite escalating external pressure. Public support for Trout's administration has remained strong.
Over 50,000 civilians volunteered to join Voluta Defense Laatri or VDP which translates to volunteers for the defense of the homeland a number verified by the Ministry of Territorial Administration. What happens when a young African doesn't beg for aid, doesn't fear headlines, and doesn't wait for permission? You get Ibrahim Trou and you get a new kind of Africa.
one that's not waiting to be saved, but standing up to be sovereign. The question is, can the West tolerate an Africa that thinks for itself, that governs itself, that defines itself? Before Sankara, before Trare, there was a man who dared to dream of a United States of Africa.
Check it out next. Stay curious, and as always, I'll see you next time.
