Burkina Faso

From the Mossi kingdoms to the land of upright people

For centuries the central plateau of the upper Volta basin was held by the Mossi kingdoms — Ouagadougou, Yatenga and Tenkodogo — ruled by the Mogho Naba and famed for their cavalry and their long resistance to Islamisation and to the Mali and Songhai empires, while Gurma, Bobo, Lobi and other peoples held the surrounding lands. Conquered by France in the 1890s, the territory was governed as the colony of Upper Volta, created in 1919, partitioned in 1932 and reconstituted in 1947. It gained independence as Upper Volta on 5 August 1960, endured a cycle of coups, was renamed Burkina Faso during Thomas Sankara's revolution in 1984, and after the long rule and 2014 overthrow of Blaise Compaoré faced a grinding Sahelian jihadist insurgency and renewed military rule.