What do you think?
Rate this book
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers the first complete biography in English of the dynamic revolutionary leader from Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. Coming to power in 1983, Sankara set his sights on combating social injustice, poverty, and corruption in his country, fighting for women's rights, direct forms of democracy, economic sovereignty, and environmental justice.
Drawing on government archival sources and over a hundred interviews with Sankara's family members, friends, and closest revolutionary colleagues, Brian J. Peterson details Sankara's political career and rise to power, as well as his assassination at age 37 in 1987, in a plot led by his close friend Blaise Compaoré.
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers a unique, critical appraisal of Sankara and explores why he generated such enthusiasm and hope in Burkina Faso and beyond, why he was such a polarizing figure, how his rivals seized power from him, and why T-shirts sporting his image still appear on the streets today.
Drawing on government archival sources and over a hundred interviews with Sankara's family members, friends, and closest revolutionary colleagues, Brian J. Peterson details Sankara's political career and rise to power, as well as his assassination at age 37 in 1987, in a plot led by his close friend Blaise Compaoré.
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers a unique, critical appraisal of Sankara and explores why he generated such enthusiasm and hope in Burkina Faso and beyond, why he was such a polarizing figure, how his rivals seized power from him, and why T-shirts sporting his image still appear on the streets today.
350 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2021
28 people are currently reading
618 people want to read
About the author
Brian J. Peterson
2 books4 followersBrian J. Peterson is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies Program at Union College. He is author of Islamization from Below: The Making of Muslim Communities in Rural French Sudan, 1880–1960.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 22, 2021
This is the closest you're ever going to get to an actual autobiography of Thomas Sankara, if he had lived long enough to write one. This book does a very great job of charting the entire life of Sankara, from his father's time as a medic in World War II all the way to Thomas' uneventful end at the trigger of Hyacinthe Kafondo's kalashnikov in 1987. The author leaves no stone unturned in painting as close to possible Thomas Sankara's very full and colorful life. What I especially loved about the book is that, it's the product of hundreds of interviews conducted with Sankara's family members, fellow revolutionaries and even those he eventually had a falling out with like Burkina Faso's civilian left cohort of PAI-LIPAD such as Philippe Quedraego, Soumane Toure and Adama Toure.
Thomas Sankara was no way a Saint, at the crux of it, he was just a mere man with his idiosyncratic values and beliefs- its from the milieu from how hard he fought to prevail these convictions that made him the renowned figure he is today. People who only watch his speeches and documentary online are stuck with this image of this charismatic young Marxist leader who was just killed abruptly in his prime. It's not really that simple as the internal dynamics of the Burkina Faso of his era has never ever been truly analyzed in any previous book on Sankara's life until this book.
Thomas Sankara was no way a Saint, at the crux of it, he was just a mere man with his idiosyncratic values and beliefs- its from the milieu from how hard he fought to prevail these convictions that made him the renowned figure he is today. People who only watch his speeches and documentary online are stuck with this image of this charismatic young Marxist leader who was just killed abruptly in his prime. It's not really that simple as the internal dynamics of the Burkina Faso of his era has never ever been truly analyzed in any previous book on Sankara's life until this book.
September 24, 2024
Peterson’s training as a social-political historian is reflected in the density of the material and the commitment to notating his assertions. (The book is more than a compendium of facts and figures in large part due to Sankara’s extraordinary charisma jumping off the page almost despite Peterson’s prose/writing style.) The same training is reflected in how Peterson describes the start of his biography-writing process: the project that ultimately became a biography of Thomas Sankara was initially going to be a “grassroots study of revolution,” an oral history “from below” that would have attempted to gauge the legacy and lasting power of the Burkina revolution: how far it reached into rural areas and how the changes and new ideals it brought live on. The more Peterson spoke with people, though, the more he kept hearing about Sankara and about the attempt to stop the revolution short by killing him, so to Sankara himself is where Peterson pivoted. The research itself, in other words, guided him to his subject.
Peterson mentions, too, that in light of the archive-destroying endeavors of Blaise Campaore – Sankara’s best friend and right-hand man, who had ordered his assassination four years into the revolution, in 1987, took over the presidency, and further attempted to erase Sankara’s legacy by forbidding mention of him – he had to turn to alternative sources. He went with a partial oral history approach: interviews with a wide variety of social actors, including but not limited to Sankara’s immediate and extended family, the survivors of his inner circle, his political allies-turned-opponents and vice versa, diplomats, activists, teachers, peasants, workers, soldiers, whoever else he could find that was involved in the events that wanted to talk and was still alive. He also successfully pulled off a FOIA request, at the recommendation of a retired American diplomat, for any Sankara-tagged material from American embassy cables; he was surprised to find much newly declassified material arriving at his doorstep. The lesson of what Peterson relates when talking about his sources lies in trying everything – you never know what might work. (A greenpeace volunteer who happened to be in Burkina Faso in 1984 might corroborate something Peterson heard a cab driver say; some US intelligence material might be declassified.) Of course, the wide range of people interviewed also served to help Peterson understand how stories of Sankara the person and Sankara the symbol intersected, as well as to unravel one from the other to make the distinctiveness and significance of each clearer.
Blaise Campaore was ousted from power after a series of mass demonstrations in the fall of 2014, at which images and quotes of Sankara were prominent; after the ousting, a federal Burkina Faso court started the first legal proceedings to prosecute Campaore and others involved in Sankara’s assassination, over 30 years after the fact. Any book seeking to popularize Sankara and the revolution he started must have his contemporary political relevance in mind; Peterson clearly grasps this. The book itself he ends on a note of “honoring the man and the revolution;” the narrative reads in part like Peterson’s realization that he stumbled onto something far more important than any academic project, that he’s lucky to have been granted the special place he has in this process by the Burkina people and by Thomas Sankara’s family.
Peterson mentions, too, that in light of the archive-destroying endeavors of Blaise Campaore – Sankara’s best friend and right-hand man, who had ordered his assassination four years into the revolution, in 1987, took over the presidency, and further attempted to erase Sankara’s legacy by forbidding mention of him – he had to turn to alternative sources. He went with a partial oral history approach: interviews with a wide variety of social actors, including but not limited to Sankara’s immediate and extended family, the survivors of his inner circle, his political allies-turned-opponents and vice versa, diplomats, activists, teachers, peasants, workers, soldiers, whoever else he could find that was involved in the events that wanted to talk and was still alive. He also successfully pulled off a FOIA request, at the recommendation of a retired American diplomat, for any Sankara-tagged material from American embassy cables; he was surprised to find much newly declassified material arriving at his doorstep. The lesson of what Peterson relates when talking about his sources lies in trying everything – you never know what might work. (A greenpeace volunteer who happened to be in Burkina Faso in 1984 might corroborate something Peterson heard a cab driver say; some US intelligence material might be declassified.) Of course, the wide range of people interviewed also served to help Peterson understand how stories of Sankara the person and Sankara the symbol intersected, as well as to unravel one from the other to make the distinctiveness and significance of each clearer.
Blaise Campaore was ousted from power after a series of mass demonstrations in the fall of 2014, at which images and quotes of Sankara were prominent; after the ousting, a federal Burkina Faso court started the first legal proceedings to prosecute Campaore and others involved in Sankara’s assassination, over 30 years after the fact. Any book seeking to popularize Sankara and the revolution he started must have his contemporary political relevance in mind; Peterson clearly grasps this. The book itself he ends on a note of “honoring the man and the revolution;” the narrative reads in part like Peterson’s realization that he stumbled onto something far more important than any academic project, that he’s lucky to have been granted the special place he has in this process by the Burkina people and by Thomas Sankara’s family.
March 7, 2025
Utrolig informativ og spennende bok om en lite kjent, men fascinerende, verdensleder som på mange måter var forut for sin tid.
Thomas Sankara var en mann som virkelig brydde seg om sine landsmenn i Øvre Volta, eller Burkina Faso som han omdøpte landet. Han så for seg en framtid der selv de svakeste og fattigste var like mye verdt som de rike, og et samfunn der folket sammen skulle bygge det unge landet etter løsrivelsen fra Frankrike.
Fra han tok over makten i et kupp i 1983, til han ble drept i et nytt kupp ledet av bestevennen Blaise Compaoré i 1987, hadde Sankara hele veien gode intensjoner om å hjelpe Burkina Faso og landets folk.
Men gode intensjoner er ikke alltid nok, og en naiv Sankara druknet til slutt i et politisk spill preget av korrupsjon og motstridende agendaer.
Thomas Sankara var en mann som virkelig brydde seg om sine landsmenn i Øvre Volta, eller Burkina Faso som han omdøpte landet. Han så for seg en framtid der selv de svakeste og fattigste var like mye verdt som de rike, og et samfunn der folket sammen skulle bygge det unge landet etter løsrivelsen fra Frankrike.
Fra han tok over makten i et kupp i 1983, til han ble drept i et nytt kupp ledet av bestevennen Blaise Compaoré i 1987, hadde Sankara hele veien gode intensjoner om å hjelpe Burkina Faso og landets folk.
Men gode intensjoner er ikke alltid nok, og en naiv Sankara druknet til slutt i et politisk spill preget av korrupsjon og motstridende agendaer.
October 13, 2021
Very good and interesting work that situates Sankara into the greater historical and political situation of "Cold War" West Africa (and the world at large). The historical documentation is certainly as thorough as the online store summaries tell and the little details of his life sprinkled throughout paint a picture of a very human revolutionary leader. A must-read for anyone interested in the man or revolutionary movements.
June 17, 2024
I’m pretty ignorant to the greater pan African movement so this was probably a decent introduction giving background of anti colonial movements in the region leading to his revolutionary movement and international recognition for his politics. Nonaligned is probably the safest label seeming to be most aligned internationally with the likes of Castro and Gaddafi and not ruling out relations with either the US or the USSR. Sankara is probably the strongest advocate of women’s rights and ecological Marxism with his reforms and desertification efforts.
Can’t remember if Peterson draws the comparison himself calling Sankara’s policies reverse austerity or if I read that somewhere else, but it’s spot on. In the Reagan era we saw a leftist take up similar “boot strap” rhetoric but in an effort to mobilize people to take pride in their country and to work to improve their lives through anti-imperialist strategies. Selling off the fleets of Mercedes that officials were chauffeured in in exchange for economy cars and riding his bike to work to lead by example. A firebrand against apartheid in South Africa and Palestine. By conventional standards he was an irrationally good person, and the world is worse off without him, but better for him having been a part of it even if so briefly.
Can’t remember if Peterson draws the comparison himself calling Sankara’s policies reverse austerity or if I read that somewhere else, but it’s spot on. In the Reagan era we saw a leftist take up similar “boot strap” rhetoric but in an effort to mobilize people to take pride in their country and to work to improve their lives through anti-imperialist strategies. Selling off the fleets of Mercedes that officials were chauffeured in in exchange for economy cars and riding his bike to work to lead by example. A firebrand against apartheid in South Africa and Palestine. By conventional standards he was an irrationally good person, and the world is worse off without him, but better for him having been a part of it even if so briefly.
November 12, 2025
I was very happy to find a modern book on the biography of Thomas Sankara. Peterson goes into great detail surrounding the aspects of Sankarism and its effects on Burkina and Africa as a whole in the short time Sankara was in power. It paints a very clear picture of the man behind the image and how his politics and ideals have survived and even been somewhat revived in Burkina Faso today, some 40 years after his death. Despite the absence of hard primary source evidence due to the Compaore regime’s repression of Sankara’s legacy after the coup, Peterson still uses a litany of written secondary and oral primary sources to depict Thomas Sankara’s story. I’m very grateful this concise biography exists for “Africa’s Che”.
September 7, 2025
At the start of the book, the author notes the general lack of documents and sources about the life of Thomas Sankara, which forces him to rely heavily on the accounts of his friends and family. As a result, this book has a clear bias and a rather one-sided view.
The author does sometimes gently suggest that Sankara wasn't perfect, but most of the time the book tends towards hero worship. It would take far too long to list all the positive traits the book ascribes to Sankara, essentially he was amazing in almost every way. Conveniently, the author clarifies that every bad or unpopular decision made by his regime was actually the fault of his associates (Compaoré gets blamed for almost everything). When the military suppressed opposition, the book wants us to believe that Sankara opposed this, but what could he do?
The author has a certain naiviety when it comes to the speeches of Sankara and tends to believe everything he says at face value. So if Sankara gave a speech in favour of say, women's rights or the environment, then this is presented as a major victory without pausing to check if Sankara ever followed up the words with action. Just because a politican gives a grandiose speech, doesn't mean they always succeed in turning words into reality.
At times this leads to silly moments like in the conclusion where the book claims that Sankara really cared about democracy, despite the fact he ran a military dictatorship. Apparently, he wanted to create a new type of democracy, not based on elections, but on some vague concept of knowing what the people want. He never made any effort to create this new system (which would presumably still have him in charge) but because there is a Sankara quote about democracy, the book takes it at face value.
In fact, the image I got of Sankara is someone who gave great speeches full of idealism, but the book doesn't consider whether his policies were actually successful. It's easy to win applause abroad with speeches denouncing imperialism, but it's much harder to run a country and actually improve people's lives. Perhaps that is the lesson of Sankara.
The author does sometimes gently suggest that Sankara wasn't perfect, but most of the time the book tends towards hero worship. It would take far too long to list all the positive traits the book ascribes to Sankara, essentially he was amazing in almost every way. Conveniently, the author clarifies that every bad or unpopular decision made by his regime was actually the fault of his associates (Compaoré gets blamed for almost everything). When the military suppressed opposition, the book wants us to believe that Sankara opposed this, but what could he do?
The author has a certain naiviety when it comes to the speeches of Sankara and tends to believe everything he says at face value. So if Sankara gave a speech in favour of say, women's rights or the environment, then this is presented as a major victory without pausing to check if Sankara ever followed up the words with action. Just because a politican gives a grandiose speech, doesn't mean they always succeed in turning words into reality.
At times this leads to silly moments like in the conclusion where the book claims that Sankara really cared about democracy, despite the fact he ran a military dictatorship. Apparently, he wanted to create a new type of democracy, not based on elections, but on some vague concept of knowing what the people want. He never made any effort to create this new system (which would presumably still have him in charge) but because there is a Sankara quote about democracy, the book takes it at face value.
In fact, the image I got of Sankara is someone who gave great speeches full of idealism, but the book doesn't consider whether his policies were actually successful. It's easy to win applause abroad with speeches denouncing imperialism, but it's much harder to run a country and actually improve people's lives. Perhaps that is the lesson of Sankara.
March 17, 2023
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa is a comprehensive, detailed, well-written and researched historical biography of Thomas Sankara. Peterson provides a balanced portrait of Thomas Sankara, which goes beyond the heroic imaginary. He gives us the opportunity to discover and appreciate Thomas Sankara for the complex, intelligent, spiritual, and altruistic human being he was. The author's inclusion of storytelling brings an important emotional dimension essential to understanding Thomas Sankara and his political journey.
While there have been ongoing efforts to erase Thomas Sankara from history, this book remembers and honors Thomas Sankara, a task I believe must have been extremely challenging and demanding. Peterson states, "As an individual, he embodied his ideals and, despite his many shortcomings, never lost sight of basic human decency and larger quest for virtue. It was a pursuit for which Sankara courageously sacraficed everything. This is why we should salute him" (305).
While there have been ongoing efforts to erase Thomas Sankara from history, this book remembers and honors Thomas Sankara, a task I believe must have been extremely challenging and demanding. Peterson states, "As an individual, he embodied his ideals and, despite his many shortcomings, never lost sight of basic human decency and larger quest for virtue. It was a pursuit for which Sankara courageously sacraficed everything. This is why we should salute him" (305).
November 8, 2025
Thomas Sankara and Burkina Faso, the Land of Upright Man
"He who feeds you, controls you."
"Where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat. These imported grains of rice, corn, and millet - that is imperialism."
Food self-sufficiency is the key to freedom.
The path we walk on, as active members, taking responsibility for our actions and understanding which are not ours to carry.
"We cannot pay because we are not responsible for this debt."
"He who feeds you, controls you."
"Where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat. These imported grains of rice, corn, and millet - that is imperialism."
Food self-sufficiency is the key to freedom.
The path we walk on, as active members, taking responsibility for our actions and understanding which are not ours to carry.
"We cannot pay because we are not responsible for this debt."
March 21, 2025
An astoundingly well written biography
This biography was exceptionally written, fair and really brought Sankara to life, complete with positive traits, blemishes and all. The mid to last part of the book were the best parts detailing the conspiracies involved in his downfall and will keep you biting your fingernails.
This biography was exceptionally written, fair and really brought Sankara to life, complete with positive traits, blemishes and all. The mid to last part of the book were the best parts detailing the conspiracies involved in his downfall and will keep you biting your fingernails.
October 25, 2022
Stellar example of leveraging many modes of research to pull together a vivid vision of Sankara, his allies and his enemies.
More biographies should be structured as clearly and impact fully as this one. A powerful story told in a simple and compelling way. Grateful to have read this!
More biographies should be structured as clearly and impact fully as this one. A powerful story told in a simple and compelling way. Grateful to have read this!
December 31, 2022
Very thorough and interesting book on the life, leadership, and death of Thomas Sankara. Explores ways that he was a leader ahead of his time - feminist, concerned about climate, anti-imperialist. Really glad I finally read this!
March 28, 2023
This book gives a thorough review of Sankara’s life and critically describes his presidency. The one thing that makes it confusing is the many names and abbreviations what can make it harder to comprehend the full story
April 23, 2023
Peterson does a very effective job of weaving the social and political context of Sankara with his biography. The approach is a fair one, addressing both his strengths and weaknesses, and moved at a steady pace. Very solid work about a hugely important figure in African history.
July 4, 2024
An excellent book written with a lot of care. I can recommend it to everyone who is interested in the topic. On the Internet is a lot of one-sided descriptions, so it was really refreshing to get a balanced view of his life and his achievements
September 17, 2024
A brilliantly written biography of one of the world’s most visionary revolutionaries. An environmentalist and feminist before his time but foremost a man who put the people of Burkina Faso before all, even his own life. A reminder of what integrity and idealism can be.
May 6, 2021
Great book on Sankara. This is the definitive biography and well worth the time and money. I highly recommend it.
May 12, 2022
This is the best book you‘ll ever read about Sankara’s life and his politics.
July 24, 2023
Excellent book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 14, 2024
La patrie ou la mort, nous vaincrons!
February 10, 2025
Fascinating, especially w/respect to his ideological formation, Sahel climate leadership, relationship to Compaoré, and the constant French plotting in West Africa
March 26, 2025
A balanced historical account and analysis of Thomas Sankara's early life through his lasting legacy post-assassination. Peterson provides the reader with a vivid portrait of Sankara as a revolutionary who was ahead of his time, without exaggerating his successes or brushing over his failures. I intend to read whichever English-language materials that I find on Thomas Sankara in the future.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews