Thomas Sankara was a Burkinabè revolutionary and Pan-Africanist who led one of the boldest experiments in self-reliance and popular power in postcolonial Africa. A young army officer shaped by Marxist study and by the political ferment he encountered during his training abroad, he came to power at thirty-three in the revolution of August 4, 1983. A year later he renamed the country Burkina Faso, "the land of upright people," rejecting the colonial name Upper Volta along with the dependency it represented.

 In four years his government launched mass vaccination and literacy campaigns, planted millions of trees against the advancing desert, and redistributed land to the peasants who worked it. It also built schools, clinics, and housing, largely through the mobilized labor of ordinary people. Sankara cut the salaries and privileges of officials, himself included, and urged Burkinabè to "consume what we produce." He held that a people who rely on foreign aid and imports can never be free. He placed women's liberation at the center of the revolution: he campaigned against forced marriage and female genital cutting and appointed women to positions of real power. He insisted that the revolution could not succeed while half the population remained oppressed. On the world stage he denounced neocolonialism and called on African nations to refuse to repay debts he described as a new form of colonial control.

On October 15, 1987, he was assassinated in a coup led by his former comrade Blaise Compaoré, who ruled for the next twenty-seven years and was convicted of the murder in absentia in 2022. Sankara's legacy endures as a model of revolutionary leadership grounded in integrity, discipline, and the belief that the oppressed can remake their societies with their own hands.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
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• Paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

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