ABUJA – As news emerged this week about hundreds of Burkina Faso citizens killed separately by both jihadi groups and government forces, images of Burkina Faso’s junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traore were plastered over Russian state media speaking about pan-Africanism and liberating the minds of the continent’s youths.
Traore, who was in Moscow for the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, is Africa’s youngest leader at 37, a strong appeal for the continent's young population that is used to much older leaders.
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Since coming to power in September 2022 after the country’s second coup that year, he has dwelt on a rhetoric of self-reliance and independence from the West, particularly former colonial ruler France — a message that often resonates with young Africans and the diaspora.
Why is Traore trending
The latest Traore frenzy reached a new peak late April with a solidarity march in the country’s capital, Ouagadougou, following an alleged coup attempt and comments by Gen. Michael Langley, the head of U.S. military in Africa, accusing the Burkina Faso leader of misusing the country's gold reserves.
Following the 2022 coup that brought him to power, Traore promised to end the country’s decadeslong deadly security crisis and leverage its rich mineral resources for the benefit of its 24 million citizens.
Alongside the coup-hit nations of Niger and Mali, Burkina Faso has since severed ties with the regional bloc of ECOWAS — criticized by many young Africans as representing the interest of leaders and not the citizens — as well as longstanding Western allies such as France, whose military provided security support to the government for many years to help its security crisis.
Analysts and locals suggest that these factors, combined with his youth, have contributed to Traore’s appeal among young Africans.
“There is a growing consciousness among African youth at home and abroad that they need to do something about the continent’s lack of progress,” said Richard Alandu, a Ghanaian living near the border with Burkina Faso. “It appears Traore has become the face of that consciousness.”
How has Traore fared as Burkina Faso's junta leader
The security crisis that Traore vowed to resolve has worsened instead, slowing the country’s overall economic development and preventing most citizens from benefiting from its mineral wealth, according to analysts and researchers’ data.
“There has been no real progress on the ground” in Burkina Faso, said Gbara Awanen, a professor of international relations and security studies at Nigeria’s Baze University, who specializes in West Africa. “A lot of it is just sleek propaganda."
Data from the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED, shows that while 2,894 people were killed by both government and armed groups during the year before the 2022 coup, the number has more than doubled to at least 7,200 in the last year.
Analysts say the attacks have worsened to the point that Ouagadougou is now increasingly threatened, with more than 60% of the country outside of government control. At least 2.1 million people have lost their homes as a result of the violence, and almost 6.5 million need humanitarian aid to survive, conservative estimates show.
Propaganda rhythms
Babacar Ndiaye, a senior fellow at the Senegal-based Timbuktu Institute for Peace Studies, attributes the current frenzy surrounding Traore primarily to his popularity — and Russia-driven propaganda
Despite Burkina Faso’s worsening security crisis, Traore still has “so much resonance and interest simply because of propaganda,” Ndiaye said. “In Africa, there is deep frustration with the traditional leadership, so there is polarized anger towards a scapegoat that is the west.”
West Africa, meanwhile, has a history of young men seizing power as exemplified by John Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, Samuel Doe in Liberia and Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, all in the 1980s. That history, placed against the perceived failure of Western-style democracy in Africa, has helped to create conditions for idolizing the likes of Traore.
Still, allegations of propaganda do not adequately explain the excitement that has built up around Africa’s youngest ruler, according to Chidi Odinkalu, an Africa analyst and professor at Tufts University.
“Traore articulates a revolutionary message that is appealing to a young population frustrated by the thievery of what passes for ‘democracy’ in their own countries,” said Odinkalu.
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