08/07/2025
Distinguished representatives of peoples great and small,
I greet you not as a career diplomat, nor as a man bred for banquet halls and handshakes. I do not come to you speaking the rehearsed language of polished politics. I come to you as a soldier of my people, as a guardian of a wounded land, as a son of a continent that has carried the cross of the world, yet has never worn its crown.
My name is Captain Ibrahim Traoré, President of Burkina Faso. And today, I speak not only for the 22 million souls in my nation but for a continent whose stories have been twisted, whose pain has been ignored, and whose dignity has been repeatedly auctioned off at the altar of foreign interests.
Africa is not a beggar. Africa is not a battlefield. Africa is not your experiment, your puppet, your warehouse of raw materials. Africa is rising not to kneel, but to stand.
And today, I say before this great assembly of nations: Africa will not kneel on the false generosity of global politics.
For decades, you have sent us aid with one hand while extracting our lifeblood with the other. You build wells in our villages while your corporations drain our rivers. You donate vaccines, yet patent the cures. You speak of climate action, yet continue to fund the very forces that burn our forests and dry our lakes.
What kind of generosity is this?
The kind that feeds the mouth but silences the voice.
The kind that keeps a man alive just enough to keep him dependent.
We are not blind to this hypocrisy. Let me be clear: we are not ungrateful for sincere humanitarian assistance but we reject a global order that disguises exploitation as partnership.
We reject financial institutions that lend with one hand and steal sovereignty with the other. Africa no longer wants charity. We want justice.
We want control over our own destinies, freedom from the chains of colonialism and its modern descendants.
Our wounds did not begin with us. They were inherited legacies of empire-building madness that saw us not as humans, but as spoils.
My ancestors were not consulted when maps were drawn with rulers and compasses in Berlin. The borders of Burkina Faso, like those of many African nations, were not carved by our ancestors but by men who had never stepped foot on our soil, who knew nothing of our languages, our tribes, or our spirits.
Today, colonialism has a new face. It wears suits.
It hosts forums.
It signs contracts in Geneva, Paris, and Washington.
But it still takes without consent.
It still dictates instead of dialogues.
It still silences instead of listening.
If you want to talk about peace, then let's begin by unlearning the arrogance that peace is something only you can teach us.
Three: On Resource Exploitation and the Myth of Development
You call us “developing” as if the theft of centuries did not set us back.
As if the gold from our lands, the diamonds from our rivers, the oil beneath our feet did not build the very skyscrapers in which this assembly sits.
Let us speak plainly.
Burkina Faso is rich. Africa is rich.
Rich in minerals, in culture, in wisdom, in youth.
But you have taught us to measure richness in GDP and export value.
You call it development when a foreign company owns 90% of a gold mine on our land.
You call it progress when your security forces guard cobalt mines, but not our children’s schools.
That is not progress.
That is piracy with legal documents.
From now on, we will define development on our own terms.
Development that puts children in classrooms not minerals on cargo ships.
Development that respects the land, the people, and the soul of a nation.
Four: On Sovereignty and Interference
Why is it that when an African nation makes independent choices, we are called unstable?
Why is it that when we seek military cooperation outside the colonial sphere, we are labeled a threat?
Burkina Faso has chosen to walk a path of sovereignty. That is not a threat to peace.
It is a declaration of adulthood.
We are no longer under your guardianship.
We are no longer your junior partners in diplomacy.
We are a free people.
If a nation chooses partners that respect it rather than exploit it, that is not rebellion.
That is wisdom.
Let it be known: no foreign tower will dictate the alliances of Burkina Faso.
We will build relations based on mutual respect not historical guilt or present-day intimidation.
Five: On Terrorism and Manufactured Wars
You ask why there is violence in the Sahel.
You ask why our youth take up arms.
But you do not ask who benefits when our mines are guarded by private mercenaries while our villages are left vulnerable.
You do not ask how weapons arrive in deserts that produce no steel.
You do not ask why peacekeeping never seems to end the war.
The truth is, many of the so-called “solutions” to African security problems are merely business models.
War has become a market.
African suffering has become a subscription-based service.
Burkina Faso has decided to break that cycle.
We will fight terror, but not with dependency.
We will secure our nation not with foreign dictates, but with national dignity.
Six: On Migration and Human Dignity
We do not want our youth drowning in the Mediterranean.
We do not want our brightest minds fleeing the countries once labeled as “savage.”
We do not want remittances.
We want reasons for our people to stay.
Why do our youth flee?
Not because we lack beauty, but because we are made to lack opportunity.
Not because we hate our land, but because our land is treated as someone else’s property.
Migration is not a crisis.
It is a symptom, of wars we did not start, of loans we did not need, of a world order that tells our youth their only value lies outside their own homes.
The solution is not border fences.
The solution is justice.
Seven: On Africa’s Place in the World
Africa is not a mistake to be fixed.
Africa is not a failed continent.
Africa is the womb of the world, the cradle of civilization, the keeper of tomorrow’s hope.
Yet we have been made invisible in global decisions that affect us deeply.
At the UN Security Council, Africa, with 54 sovereign nations, has no permanent seat.
What justice is this?
You call it balance. We call it betrayal.
You speak of democracy, yet uphold a global structure where the powerful few veto the dreams of the many.
We will no longer whisper in rooms where we deserve to speak with full voice.
Eight: On Faith and Spiritual Dignity
We are a spiritual people.
Before your cathedrals, our ancestors sang to the sky.
Before your missionaries, we knew the language of the rivers and the laws of the sacred forest.
Christianity came. Islam came.
And we received them, not as slaves, but as seekers.
But now we ask: Will the church and the mosque stand with us, truly with us, when our people are displaced by greed masked as globalization?
Will your pulpits echo our cries, or only repeat the songs of the powerful?
Faith too must be decolonized.
It must walk with the poor, not the privileged.
Nine: On Unity Among African Nations
This is not a speech from one country.
This is the stirring of a continent.
You see Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso forming a new bond and you fear our unity.
Why? Because it threatens the myth that Africa can only rise under your supervision.
We are uniting not to wage war, but to wage dignity. To pool our courage, to share strength, to protect each other when the world turns its back.
Pan-Africanism is not a dream.
It is our lifeline. And we will build it, stone by stone, heart by heart, with or without your approval.
Ten: To the Youth of Africa
To the young boy selling oranges by the roadside. To the girl who walks 10 kilometers to attend school. To the child whose only toy is a stone but who dreams of stars. You are the reason we fight.
Do not believe the lie that your continent is cursed. You are the blessing. Do not envy foreign passports. Be proud of your name, your land, your roots. The world may not applaud you now, but the future will speak your name in honor.
Eleven: Final Words – We Will Not Kneel
I do not come to declare war.
I come to declare will.
We will not kneel to fear.
We will not kneel to foreign banks.
We will not kneel to outdated empires masquerading as friends.
Africa is not asking for a seat at your table.
Africa is building its own table.
