Ibrahim Traoré, African warrior, survives another assassination attempt

Ibrahim Traoré is gathering admiration far and wide. Enthusiastic undergraduate students know his name. And they cautiously nurture a growing interest in this young African leader. Why?

Because Traoré is doing the seemingly impossible. A warrior and a just leader, fighting for the Burkinabe, taking big mining and businesses to task, building new industries, providing free health care for women, agricultural reforms, and throwing out colonial-style white wigs in courts as part of decolonization efforts to foster a different national identity.

An inspirational young leader with integrity. A brave man. Calling the shots while dodging the bullets. Repetitively.

Africa has borne witness to the emergence of extraordinary leaders who fervently championed independence and self-determination. But more than on any other continent, we cut them down. Africa’s history is littered with African leaders who dared challenge the status quo. The ‘hot’ Cold War reveals a bloody legacy of overthrowing and killing of leaders from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Mozambique, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo and Zimbabwe.

But we get more media coverage about the military coups, painting Traoré as an anti-democratic rebel.

Samba Sylla offers another view of coups in The crisis of French imperialism: debating military coups in Africa. He writes that since 2020, the African continent has witnessed a series of nine successful military coups, prompting the narrative of a ‘return of coups’ and a ‘democracy backslide’. This article argues that this view is flawed: it is based on data that are both superficial and devoid of historical contextualisation.

Traoré, 1 April 2025, said “We are not in a democracy... we are in a progressive, popular revolution.”