Burkina Faso Renames Major Boulevard After Thomas Sankara

As part of the commemoration of 36th anniversary of Thomas Sankara's assassination on October 15, Boulevard Général Charles De Gaulle in the capital Ouagadougou was officially renamed Boulevard Thomas Sankara, replacing the country's former colonial ruler with its Pan-Africanist father of independence. The move follows similar trends in Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal.

Daouda Traoré, retired colonel major and vice-president of the international Thomas Sankara Memorial Committee said: "(This is the) name that drapes this boulevard with the seal of dignity and sovereignty of our people, in keeping with our history, our spirit and our soul marked by anti-imperialist convictions".

While Burkina Faso has seen a swell in anti-French sentiment, the affirmation of sovereignty through renaming streets and monuments is by no means particular to the Sahel state.

"The debate began in Cameroon with the awakening of civil society," says Kalvin Soiresse, a Belgian MP of Cameroon-Togolese origin, and former coordinator of the Mémoires Coloniales collective.

"In Africa and among the diaspora we see a new movement of appropriating political identity based on [notions of] sovereignty," he told RFI.

In Cote d'Ivoire Soiresse points to stadiums named after the former Ivorian prime minister Charles Konan Banny or current president Alassane Ouattara; and streets named after former president Laurent Gbagbo.

French presidents Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand have lost streets, and been replaced respectively by the first Ivorian president Félix Houphouet-Boigny and writer and politician German Coffi Gadeau and First Lady Dominique Ouattara.

In Senegal, opposition leader Ousmane Sonko began renaming streets after anti-colonial figures shortly after becoming mayor of Ziguinchor in February 2022.