The Lion Of Africa Captain Ibrahim Traore

     The President of Burkina Faso, The Lion of Africa, Captain Ibrahim Traore is attempting the impossible, he is attempting to end colonial oppression in Africa, and this is not the first time somebody tried to do this in Burkina Faso, three months before Traore was born, Captain Thomas Sankara was assassinated. Sankara was a Marxist that came to power through a coup similar to Traore, they both assumed power around the same age, were captains in the military, and due to numerous other comparisons and the 3 months between their death and birth many people in Africa sincerely believe that Captain Ibrahim Traore is the reincarnation of Captain Thomas Sankara.

     President Ibrahim Traore set about a cultural revolution in Burkina Faso. Instead of buying fancy cars like most coup leaders, Traore bought tractors, tillers and water pumps to set up agriculture and encouraged the youth of Burkina Faso to take on farming as a business, giving the equipment away to collectives and entrepreneurs. They're also setting up aquaculture fish farms with the pumps, and if their neighbor Nigeria is an example, it's probably catfish farms because catfish are a sturdy fish.

     Now you would think, oh sure, maybe these are just pipe dreams because it would be hard to do, you know, in Africa where many countries are poor and depend on food aid from the outside world? But no, Traore knows it can be done. It was done before. In only 4 years from 1983 to 1987 Thomas Sankara transformed Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) into a food independent country after investing in agriculture, and then after he was assassinated magically Burkina Faso became poor again, stopped being food independent, and started importing grain again just to keep the people from starving, while at the same time having gold mines that exported 100 tons of gold per year.

     Captain Ibrahim Traore took power from another coup leader after less than 6 months in 2022. He went to the Africa summit in 2023 and thanked Putin for giving him the free grain, but asked Putin and the world essentially, “maybe it's just me and my generation, but how is it that we have a hundred tons of gold being pulled out of our mines but our people are poor and we have to import grain? We will be food independent by 2024.”

     Then he shocked the world and actually tried to do everything he said, transforming the economy of Burkina Faso. He so impressed his neighbors that his two neighbors, Mali and Niger (both former French colonies like Burkina Faso who both had similar coups around the same time) want to join Burkina Faso, and all three leaders announced simultaneously on their state media at the end of last year that they were going to become one country, have one military, and end the the Islamic jihadists that continually terrorize and kill people, accused of killing over a million civilians over the last decade in the three countries. They formed the Alliance of Sahal States or AES in French, and Niger formally asked everyone in the area to join the alliance.

     All of the public officials from Burkina Faso say that the French were still being colonial, and were exploiting them by exporting raw ore and giving them at best 10% of the profits from the gold mines, as well as by unfair manipulation of the CFA franc, and they all say that the World Bank and IMF have too many strings attached to take their loans. And so Traore kicked out the French military and dealt with terrorism himself, buying Turkish drones to patrol the skies and eliminate terrorists. And he seized the gold mines and kicked out all of the foreign companies, including the Russians. They don't even allow the Wagner Russian group in their country, and they say that they're going to grow their own cotton, and build their own factories to produce their own cloth, and then they will make their own uniforms in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger for a unified army for the area, and they've stopped using the CFA franc, and are going to start their own currency. Maybe backed by gold because they now have 100 tons of gold that they can pull out of just Burkina Faso each year.

     And if you add Mali, that's another hundred tons of gold per year in 2022, and then Niger has gold, oil, and uranium, so they're a triple threat, and they have constructed pipelines to feed oil to Mali and Burkina Faso so the are can be oil independent as well. That's a lot to have from one unified country, over 232 tons of gold potentially generated per year, oil independent, as well as the potential for refining uranium and doing nuclear power. But all that gold can go into a central bank to back a currency like Zimbabwe did when they launched their gold back Zig, the only Zimbabwe currency to not be destroyed by rampant inflation almost immediately after its release, which has been stable for over a month at this point, and actually experience slight deflation against the US dollar.

     And what Traore is doing is spreading. There's apparently a new military alliance between Burkina Faso and Rwanda. Benin has an oil pipeline coming from Niger and Niger shut that off until Benin joins the Confederacy, and other countries seem very impressed with Traore, earning him the name The Lion of Africa, now wanting to know why their leaders don't do the same thing. Over the last two years countries all over Africa have been withdrawing their gold reserves from French banks as they align with Traore, and since the US sanctioned Russia, countries all over the world have been withdrawing their gold reserves from the United States as well, not wanting to have their gold seized if the US got mad at them, like they did with Russia’s gold.

     Traore has had up to nine assassination attempts in 2 years, mostly inside attempts at coups, but at the end of May he held a referendum since he had only said he would run things for 21 months, and then would allow people to have a referendum about elections. Tens of thousands of people turned out into the streets, into the villages, and into the surrounding countries, and surrounded the building where the referendum was held. Everyone in attendance asked for 10 more years with no elections, but it was finally decided that the crowd and the students who had been given access to agriculture, futures, and jobs would be satisfied with five more years, and so it was decided that Traore would officially become president until 2029. He is officially the President of Burkina Faso now and he is the supreme military leader of Burkina Faso and possibly Mali and Niger as well. Long live the Lion of Africa.