Thomas Sankara (1949–1987)
Born 1949 CE, died 1987 CE.
Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (21 December 1949 – 15 October 1987) was a Burkinabé military officer, politician and revolutionary who served as the first president of Burkina Faso from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. Ideologically a Marxist and pan-Africanist, he previously also served as the fifth prime minister of Upper Volta from January to May 1983. After Sankara was appointed Prime Minister of the Republic of Upper Volta in 1983, he had political disputes with the sitting government that resulted in his eventual imprisonment. While he was under house arrest, a group of revolutionaries seized power on his behalf in a popular coup later that year. Following a takeover in a coup, at the age of 33, Sankara became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta and launched an unprecedented series of social, ecological, and economic reforms that were part of what he referred to as the people's democratic revolution. In 1984, Sankara oversaw the renaming of the country as Burkina Faso ('land of the upright people'), and personally wrote its national anthem.
Text from the Wikipedia article Thomas_Sankara, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.