Thomas Sankara and Jean Ziegler: The Speech on Debt

A life of dazzling intensity

Jean Ziegler retraces the brief life of President Thomas Sankara, assassinated at thirty-seven, and accompanies it with the testamentary speech delivered before the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa in July 1987, only a few months before his death.

A portrait of integrity and rupture

Ziegler portrays Sankara as a herald of African dignity: a visionary officer critical of the inherited colonial order, a head of state who rejected privileges and luxury, reformed public administration and mobilised millions of tree plantings against desertification.

He was also a Pan-Africanist, feminist and early environmentalist, convinced that Africa should cease holding out its hand and learn to stand upright.

Debt as continued tutelage

On 29 July 1987, Sankara denounced foreign debt as proof that formal independence could remain an empty shell. Loans contracted by corrupt dictatorships, often supported by Western powers and without popular consent, kept African nations under the authority of international financial institutions.

Interest payments could exceed the sums received. Africa was therefore paying more than it obtained and deepening the cycle of impoverishment.

The necessity of collective refusal

Sankara insisted that one country acting alone would be crushed. Refusing illegitimate debt required a common African position capable of overcoming fear and resisting the established economic order.

He proposed another logic founded on self-sufficiency, sobriety, social justice and cooperation among countries of the South. Repayment at any cost meant accepting a silent death.

A political testament

The speech produced no immediate collective action, and Sankara was assassinated on 15 October 1987. Yet his words remain alive because the structures he exposed have not disappeared.

Ziegler presents the text as more than an archive: it is a lesson in political economy, a manifesto for lucid and solidaristic emancipation, and an act of faith in the dignity of peoples.