Burkina Faso: The Land of the Upright People is Rising

On Sept. 30, 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, president of Burkina Faso, was placed into office after a military coup. Traoré has done what few leaders dare to do: He’s KEPT HIS WORD. Traoré stands for people. Capt. Ibrahim Traoré is one of the most fearless, unapologetic leaders in the world right now.

Where is Burkina Faso? And why should you care?

If you don’t know much about Burkina Faso, don’t worry—you’re not alone. The mainstream media barely talks about it, and that’s not an accident.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked nation in West Africa, bordered by Niger, Benin and Mali. It may not be on your daily news feed, but what’s happening there right now is historic. This country is proving that an African nation can stand tall without utilizing Western aid, funding or military support.

Most politicians make big promises and then sell out the people the moment they get into power. Traoré? He’s different.

His first move as president? Kicking the French military out of Burkina Faso.

For decades, France kept troops in Burkina Faso under the excuse of “security cooperation.” But let’s be real – they weren’t there to protect Burkinabè citizens. They were there to protect France’s economic interests. France had access to Burkina Faso’s natural wealth, while Burkinabè citizens struggled.

Traoré saw through the lies and made it clear: No more French troops. No more Western control. No more exploitation.

But he didn’t stop there. He also canceled contracts with corrupt foreign corporations like Endeavour Mining, Orano and African Minerals, cutting off outsiders who were bleeding the country dry.

For the first time in a long time, Burkina Faso was calling its own shots.

Building a nation that stands on its own

According to Wikipedia, French West Africa was a federation of eight French colonial territories in West Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guinea (now Guinea), Ivory Coast, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Dahomey (now Benin) and Niger. Will the rest follow Burkina Faso’s lead?

Real independence isn’t just about removing foreign soldiers – it’s about making sure your country doesn’t have to rely on outside help to survive.

Traoré knew that true sovereignty meant self-sufficiency. So, instead of taking out loans with hidden strings attached, he invested in his own people.

• He bought 400 tractors and 200+ tillers to boost local agriculture.

• He built a tomato processing plant, so Burkina Faso could turn its own crops into products instead of importing from the same countries that once colonized it.

• He deployed mobile medical trucks to reach underserved communities, proving that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege.

And when the U.S. cut off USAID assistance to Burkina Faso? Traoré didn’t beg – Burkina Faso was already feeding itself. They had increased domestic rice and wheat production, proving that a nation doesn’t need Western handouts to survive.

This wasn’t just a political shift – it was a revolution in self-reliance.

Reclaiming the land for the people

One of the most groundbreaking moves Traoré has made is his land reform policy.

For years, foreign investors and corporations bought up massive amounts of land in Burkina Faso, pushing out locals who had lived there for generations. Families who had farmed their land for centuries suddenly found themselves displaced – all because outsiders wanted a bigger slice of the pie.

Sound familiar? This is colonialism 2.0.

But Traoré said, not on my watch.

Under his new policy, ALL land in Burkina Faso belongs to the country of Burkina Faso itself.

• Foreigners can lease land – but they CAN’T own it.
• The wealth of Burkina Faso stays in Burkina Faso.
• Indigenous communities are protected from land grabs.

This is HUGE. It means no more stolen land, no more exploitation, no more foreign control. It means that Burkina Faso is truly taking its country back.

The Second Coming of Sankara?

Thomas Sankara

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Burkina Faso has seen a leader like this before: Thomas Sankara.

In 1983, Sankara led a revolution to make Burkina Faso self-reliant, free from Western control and economically independent. He fought against corruption, built infrastructure, and pushed for agricultural reforms that put power back into the hands of the people.

The West couldn’t handle that. So, what happened? He was assassinated in 1987.

Now, in 2025, Traoré is picking up where Thomas Sankara left off. He’s fighting the same battle, and once again the world is watching.

We cannot let history repeat itself. We have to support Burkina Faso in its fight for true independence?

Burkina Faso: A blueprint for Africa’s future?

Traoré’s leadership isn’t just transforming Burkina Faso. It’s setting an example for the entire African continent.

For too long, African nations have been pressured into playing by Western rules. They’ve been told they need the U.S., Europe and international loans to survive.

Burkina Faso is proving that’s a lie. Africa has everything it needs and will show the world that it is able to stand on its own without outside “Conditional Aid.”

Of course, there are challenges – security threats, economic pressure, Western opposition. Capt. Traoré is showing that, with courage and the support of the country, it is possible.

For the first time in decades, Burkina Faso is putting its people first.

The Land of the Upright People is standing tall

The current flag of Burkina Faso was adopted after Sankara’s August revolution in 1983, reports Flags.com. The red stripe represents the revolution, and the green symbolizes the country’s agriculture and natural resources. The yellow star stands for the guiding light shaping the nation’s path. Additionally, red, green and yellow are closely associated with Pan-Africanism and show Burkina Faso’s unity with other African countries.

Burkina Faso’s official name means “The Land of the Upright People.” Under President Traoré, the name has never been more fitting since Thomas Sankara.

This isn’t just about politics. This is a movement. A movement for sovereignty, dignity and true independence.

Why isn’t the Western media talking about this?

Mainstream media does not want you to know that Burkina Faso is changing the narrative as a country gaining self-sufficiency. When a country is going against the political agenda of the West, they are labeled as hostile, or removed from the algorithm.

Traoré’s leadership is bigger than Burkina Faso. It’s about the future of African sovereignty.

If you’re tired of hearing the same recycled narratives about Africa being dependent on the West, stick around. Because Burkina Faso is proving that self-determination isn’t just possible – it’s happening.

Tiy Todd
Source: SF Bayview

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17467

What is Happening in the Congo

The vast territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is probably the richest area of the planet in natural resources, especially in its eastern part, coinciding with the final tail of the Rift Valley tectonic fracture, where minerals emerge from greater depth and in greater concentration. At the same time, its people are among the poorest in the world, according to UN development and poverty measurements. In the face of the standardized narrative of “the curse of wealth”, we must remember that the real curse is not natural wealth, but the capitalist system, which prioritizes economic benefits over people’s lives.

Ever since the United States and Belgium, with the support of all the Western powers, put an end to the great Congo’s dream of independence by assassinating Patrice Lumumba, the Western powers have exercised control over that wealth by all violence necessary. In recent decades, China has arrived as a new trading partner and is today one of Congo’s main exporters of natural resources, although the Asian giant does not use violence to extract raw materials, as the West traditionally does.

It is not the DRC, nor the EU, nor China, nor Russia that has taken the trouble to calculate how much the untapped subsoil of the DRC is worth (in dollars), but the United States. According to the US Geological Survey, the value of Congo’s untapped strategic mineral reserves, i.e. the huge Congolese raw materials that already supply international markets are not counted here, is $24 trillion. For comparison, we can put this figure next to the Gross Domestic Product of the entire European Union, which is $17.7 trillion. The “hassle” of making these calculations already gives us an idea of who is after what.

From Davos to Goma

Between January 20 and 24, the World Economic Forum was held in Davos. The president of the DRC, Felix Tshisekedi, went to this forum to sign with investors for a new infrastructure megaproject at the service of foreign powers: the extension of the “Lobito corridor”, with a new 2,600 km railroad line, which will directly link the provinces of North and South Kivu with the ports of the Atlantic coast. The “green” line would cross areas of protected biodiversity such as the Virunga National Park and the forests of the Congo River Basin. But it is “green” because the G20, or rather its core: the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan), has decided so.

In 2023, the United States and the EU, in the framework of the G7, decided to compete against China in the extraction of Congolese raw materials, activating the old Belgian colonial corridor of Lobito, to extract directly the essential raw materials for the green markets of the moment, cobalt, copper, coltan, lithium and others, from the Kivus to the Atlantic. The first ships loaded with tons of these precious minerals already left Lobito in Angola at the end of 2024. Now, Tshisekedi was charged with presenting the West’s new public-private mega-investment in the DRC: the “Green Corridor”. A combined investment of 150 billion euros, between the US, the EU, private companies, and the African Development Bank, which will provide 500 million.

The raw materials available in the DRC are so strategic for the new green technological revolution that the Davos Forum openly declares that “resource scarcity is at the top of the list of major risks for the next 10 years”.

Rwanda, the mediator whose job is in the balance

Rwanda signed an agreement with the European Union in February 2024, for the export of strategic minerals (which it does not possess on its own soil, but plunders in eastern Congo) to the European powers, which deliberately close their eyes to the occupation and horrendous crimes committed by the Rwandan regime in Congo since it invaded it for the first time in 1996.

It could be feared that the reactivation of the Lobito corridor, with the expansion that the big companies and Western powers (which the Rwandan regime has been serving since it came to power in 1994) have already begun to implement, will reduce the transit of everything stolen from the Congo through the traditional mediators in Kigali.

Many of us think that this is why the massacres and crimes committed by their soldiers stationed in Congo, who now call themselves M23, intensified during the Davos Forum, to send the message that they are not going to be thrown off the geostrategic chessboard of Congolese resources so easily.

For two years they have been occupying Congolese border towns like Bunagana, and the central government did not even bother to react and, of course, the international community ignored it. From that week of January 20-24 until today, the M23 and some 5,000 Rwandan forces in their support have intensified their horrendous crimes such as the mass rape of some 170 imprisoned women who were later burned alive, or the execution of children carrying weapons stolen from dead soldiers, beheadings of civilians and combatants and much more.

30 years of invasion and crimes

For 30 years, rebel groups at the service of the Rwandan regime have been massacring and plundering the Congo, causing millions of deaths, displacing people, using mass rapes as a weapon of war, and other crimes against humanity… perfectly documented by the UN and other organizations. They have done it under different acronyms: In 1996 they arrived as AFDL, in 1998 they called themselves RCD-Goma; then they became CNDP in 2007, and finally, in 2012, they changed to M23. Always under the command of the Rwandan Armed Forces, but posing as Congolese. Everyone knows it.

This small country and its partner in crime, the Ugandan regime of Yoweri Museveni, could not have come this far without the backing and support of the United States and the European Union.

Although the Congolese government has acted in these 30 years as an ally of the aggressors, or in the service of all of them, as in the current case, the Congolese people know very well who their aggressor is: the West, through its delegates in the region, the Rwandan and Ugandan regimes. That is why, while Tshisekedi was selling his country in Davos and the M23 was attacking Goma, the demonstrators in Kinshasa were burning the embassies of the powers involved in all this: the United States, France, Belgium, Uganda, Rwanda and Japan? Why Japan? I was asked by many people, because of the Asian powers, Japan is the ally of the West, not the new partners who buy materials without massacring the people, China. Japan is a quiet member of the G7. The burning of its embassy is a clear message that the people know too well what is happening to them, down to the last detail.

The Congolese army is ill-equipped and underpaid, it has been suffering for years from infiltration into its ranks of Rwandan “rebels” under all those acronyms mentioned above, with every damned peace agreement pushed by the international community. These military men in the Congolese army in the service of their neighboring aggressors, have assassinated every high command willing to do their duty to fight external aggression, the latest, the assassination of General Chirimwami, on January 23. The DRC cannot count on its own army.

The attackers have occupied the airports and the capitals of North and South Kivu, Goma, and Bukavu respectively, as well as other mining towns, so that the supply chain does not stop. The dead and displaced are in the thousands. Poorly equipped and assisted self-defense movements engage in bloody fighting against the M23, equipped with high-level technology and training. The genocide continues in Congo, and for the moment it does not seem that the umpteenth peace agreements, such as those of Luanda, will stop it. The same goes for the umpteenth peace mission, nothing will change as long as the system that serves all this living hell does not change.

Source: Al Mayadeen

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17208