Burkina Faso: Good Riddance to a Colonial Hyena

The decision by Burkina Faso to sever diplomatic relations with France is one of the most encouraging pieces of news to emerge from Africa in recent years. It is not merely a diplomatic disagreement between two states. It is a symbolic declaration that the age of colonial tutelage is drawing to a close in our beautiful continent. It is another sign that Africa’s long and painful struggle to free itself from foreign domination is finally acquiring momentum. The people of Burkina Faso have done what generations of African nationalists dreamed of doing. They have looked their former colonial master in the eye and said: enough.

The land of the upright people has boldly told the most pernicious parasitic colonial leech, France, to pack and go.

Colonialism, contrary to what European myth-makers wrote, was never an altruistic enterprise. It was a gigantic theft organized on a continental scale, and it was sustained by extreme violence and brutality. Independence was supposed to remedy that and grant the natives the right to pursue their development in their own ways. While the other colonial powers largely respected this, France refused to let go.

No other colonial power has inflicted more sustained damage upon post-independence Africa than France. While it is true that all the colonialists looted - British, Belgians, Portuguese - it was the French who remained the worst leech that refused to let go of its victims.

Colonialism itself was little more than organized theft wrapped in the language of civilization. Yet France distinguished itself by refusing to abandon colonialism even after independence. While other imperial powers adjusted their methods to changing realities, Paris remained stubbornly attached to the illusion that vast portions of Africa remained its private estate.

After the ostensible independence, with all the lavish ceremonies, pomp, and pageantry, France perfected one of the most sophisticated systems of neocolonial control ever devised. Although African flags (most of them are indistinguishable) were raised, national anthems were composed, and constitutions were drafted, behind the ceremonial independence stood the invisible hand of Paris directing affairs. French corporations controlled strategic resources. French troops occupied military bases across the continent while French advisers influenced policy. The notorious CFA franc ensured that entire economies remained tethered to French interests.

Whenever an African leader displayed an inconvenient desire for genuine sovereignty, mysterious forces suddenly appeared to restore order.

The list of African patriots whose dreams collided with French interests and paid the supreme price reads like a tragic roll call. They are not the inventions of conspiracy theorists. France’s countless assassinations, coups, destabilization campaigns, and political manipulations have scarred Francophone Africa; they left in their wakes societies immobilized by cruelty and neglect. The sense of entitlement and the brutal force necessary to enforce it by French Gendermines constitute the very architecture upon which French influence was built - unremitting brutal force designed solely to intimidate natives. African leaders who sought control over their own resources were branded extremists and killed. Governments that attempted independent policies became targets for French subversion. Nations that desired dignity were taught painful lessons about the limits of permitted independence.

No African country embodied this tragedy more than Burkina Faso itself. The sad specter of Thomas Sankara still haunts the Sahel. Sankara was a young, bold African who represented the possibility of an Africa governed in the interests of Africans rather than foreign shareholders. His commitment to self-reliance, dignity, and economic independence made him beloved by ordinary Africans and deeply unsettling to those who profited from the continent’s dependency. His fate became a warning to others who contemplated similar paths.

France killed him, but Africa did not forget him.

History possesses a sense of irony. The very system that appeared invincible has begun to collapse under the weight of its own arrogance.

For years, we have observed with alarm the intellectual decline of Europe’s governing classes. Every civilization eventually experiences periods of decay, but few have managed the process with such spectacular incompetence. Europe once produced statesmen capable of understanding history, culture, strategy, and power.

However, one may disagree with their politics, ideologies, or objectives, one would concede that men such as Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand, and Jacques Chirac possessed intellects equal to the complexities of statecraft. They understood Africa. They understood power. They understood that an empire required subtlety.

The current generation understands none of these things.

Emmanuel Macron inherited one of the most elaborate neocolonial systems ever constructed. A statesman of genuine ability might have managed its gradual transformation while preserving French influence. Instead, Macron accelerated its destruction. He approached Africa not with humility but with lectures, not with diplomacy but with condescension. Not with strategic intelligence but with the self-assurance of a provincial bureaucrat convinced that history ended sometime around 1995.

The result of Macron’s staggering incompetence is visible across the Sahel. The AES has expelled French troops, with Senegal mulling their expulsion. The once pervasive French influence is rapidly evaporating. The once formidable prestige of the French now lies in ruins. Governments that once trembled at Parisian displeasure now openly challenge French authority.

Surprisingly, French officials and media appear bewildered that the natives have stopped obeying instructions. They lack the intellectual rigor necessary to understand a complex geopolitical situation. They cannot also ask basic questions, like: who wants to remain a France’s poodle in 2026 when there are alternatives?

Unfortunately, this intellectual bankruptcy is not confined to France; it has infested every European country we care to examine. Germany, supposedly one of the world’s great centers of education, engineering, and scholarship, now produces officials whose public pronouncements often resemble the fevered rhetoric of undergraduate activists intoxicated by ideological fantasies.

Of recent, enboldened revanchist German politicians and ministers have repeatedly issued belligerent statements regarding Russia, military escalation, and global affairs with a recklessness that would have horrified the diplomats of an earlier generation.

One is left wondering whether Europe still produces statesmen or merely manufactures spokespersons.

The tragedy is that Europe’s leaders seem incapable of recognizing the transformation occurring before their eyes. The world that sustained European dominance is disappearing. China has emerged as an economic giant. Russia has reasserted itself as the world’s preeminent military power. BRICS continues to attract nations seeking alternatives to Western hegemony. Across the Global South, countries increasingly demand sovereignty rather than supervision.

Yet Europe’s political class behaves as though the twentieth century never ended.

Burkina Faso’s decision, therefore, carries significance beyond the immediate diplomatic quarrel. It represents another crack in the foundations of a dying international order. It demonstrates that African nations are beginning to understand a simple truth: no people can develop while remaining tenants on their own land. Sovereignty is not a slogan. It is the indispensable foundation of development. A nation whose currency, resources, military, and policies remain subject to foreign influence cannot genuinely claim independence.

Burkina Faso will certainly face difficulties. But we Africans must recognize that freedom and independence are rarely comfortable. We must recognize what the Iranians have just demonstrated: no price is too high to pay for national sovereignty.

As we have written several times in this blog, Africa’s future will not be built in Paris, London, Brussels, or Washington. It will be built in African capitals by patriotic and motivated Africans pursuing African interests. The continent will never know lasting peace, prosperity, or dignity until it frees itself from the colonial albatrosses that continue to feed upon its resources while preaching partnership.

Among those albatrosses, France has long occupied a special place of dishonor.

Its retreat from the center of African affairs should not be mourned. It should be celebrated.

For the first time in a very long time, the colonial hyena in Africa is being chased from the village. The villagers are finally beginning to discover that the chickens were theirs all along.

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

My Mission: Ignorantia et stultitia delendae sunt / Ignorance and stupidity must be destroyed.

I am an unapologetic Pan-Africanist who is unconditionally opposed to any form or manifestation of racism, fascism, and discrimination.

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