![burkina faso upper volta security council burkina faso upper volta security council](https://cdn.modernghana.com/story_/770/400/afp_five_key_facts_about_burkina_faso.jpg)
Its government structure is a military junta. Repeated military coups during the 1970s and 1980s were followed by multiparty elections in the early 1990s. Burkina Faso (then named the Republic of Upper Volta) became a main labour source. Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) achieved independence from France in 1960.
![burkina faso upper volta security council burkina faso upper volta security council](https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/bilder/burkina-faso-199~_v-original.jpg)
With an average age of less than 18, most of the country’s 17 million population have never known another leader.Ĭrowds danced, cheered and blew whistles in Place de la Nation on Friday after Compaore’s resignation, before the army announced it was taking charge. Migration in Burkina Faso has long been a traditional way of life for. Despite being one of the world’s poorest nations, Burkina Faso positioned itself as a key mediator in regional crises under the stewardship of the imposing Compaore, popularly known as ‘Handsome Blaise’, who was renowned as a skilled negotiator and a wily, ruthless politician.Ī taciturn former soldier who had survived several bids to oust him after he seized power in a 1987 military coup, Compaore initially sought to defy the calls for him to step down once the protests turned violent on Thursday.ĭiplomats said Compaore - widely blamed for the death of his friend, the leftwing revolutionary Thomas Sankara, in the 1987 coup - was alarmed at the possibility of prosecution on rights charges if he left office.īut his bid to cling to the presidency - and its lavish trappings - angered many young people in a country stagnating in 183rd place out of 186 countries on the U.N.