‘Prendre notre destin en main’: anti-imperialism and sovereignty in Burkinabè political discourse from Thomas Sankara to Ibrahim Traoré

Summary Ibrahim Traoré frequently invokes Thomas Sankara’s memory and, in social media and the press, he has been likened to him. Through an analysis of public speeches and addresses by Traoré, this debate piece considers the influences of Sankara’s articulation of anti-imperial sovereignty for Burkina Faso. The two leaders align in their rejection of patronage to la Françafrique , the rejections of debt and international development dependency, and insistence on dignity, self-determination and forms of community-driven autarky. The piece develops the concept of formal positivity ( positivité formelle ) to understand aspects of Traoré’s anticolonial discourse which are normatively legitimate in form, posture and historical alignment, including by explicitly refusing sanctions systems and Western-driven security partnerships, and galvanising and building upon collective Burkinabè anger at historical conditions of dependency, patterns of French-supported political and economic domination, and geopolitical humiliations. Sovereignty is a central component within Traoré’s anticolonial discourse, though its actualisation is informed by local capacities to transform the economy, sporadically compromised by the practice of displacing blame for internal frictions onto external actors and limited within a global capitalist economic system that explicitly marginalises and excludes Burkinabè expressions of self-determination.