Briefing: Burkina Faso—the Fall of Blaise Compaoré

...Blaise Compaoré resigned and fled Burkina Faso on 31 October 2014 under the sustained assault of a coalition of youth, cultural leaders, civil society organizations and opposition parties, and after the defection of core segments of his military. Compaoré had been in power since the assassination of his predecessor Thomas Sankara on 15 October 1987. This briefing first discusses the actual sequence of events that led to the transition. We then identify some deeper trends that weakened the regime, including the dilemma of succession in a semi-authoritarian regime, the rise of youth and cultural elites as opposition actors who placed themselves beyond the reach of regime co-optation, and the use of Sankara imagery as a tool of mobilization. We then jointly analyse two features of the transition and the current regime of Lt-Col Isaac Yacouba Zida who, despite being only prime minister, appears to be the country's new strongman. The first is the relative institutional uncertainty that accompanied the fall of the Compaoré regime and which continues to hamper the transition. The second is the enduring role of the military in Burkinabè politics. We conclude by singling out some implications of the transition and the challenges ahead.