France cut off aid to Burkina Faso. Traoré didn’t flinch.
He didn’t call Paris. He didn’t send a delegation. He didn’t beg for the money to keep flowing. He looked at the record and said the quiet part out loud.
“We have been receiving French aid for 63 years, yet our country has not developed. Cutting it off now will not kill us—it will motivate us to work and rely on ourselves.”
That is the English translation of what he said in French on August 8, 2023: “Si après 63 ans d’indépendance l’aide financière et l’appui budgétaire de la France n’ont pas permis au Burkina Faso de se développer… leur absence va nous mettre au travail.”
Think about what 63 years means. Independence in 1960. French troops stationed on Burkinabè soil under a 1961 military assistance agreement. Budget support arriving every year. Development programs announced every year. And at the end of it, Burkina Faso was still one of the poorest countries on earth—GDP per capita of about $873 in 2023, ranked 190th globally.
Traoré denounced the 1961 agreement on March 1, 2023. French forces left. Then in August 2023, after Burkina Faso backed Niger’s new government, France suspended its development aid and budget support.
His response was not anger. It was arithmetic. “If after 63 years of independence France’s financial aid and budget support did not allow Burkina Faso to develop when we received them every year, I do not believe their absence will be fatal to us. On the contrary, their absence will put us to work.”
That line separates two kinds of leaders. One waits for the next check. The other asks why the check never changed anything.
He is not anti-French. He has said so himself. His terms are simple. Come as an equal or don’t come. “Anyone who wants to cooperate with us is welcome… but now in Burkina Faso, the resources belong to us 100%. If they come with the spirit of a master to treat us like slaves, we will expel them.”
The aid is gone. Burkina Faso is still standing. And Traoré is asking a question every African leader should have asked decades ago: if their help never helped, why were we afraid to lose it?
The homeland or death. We shall overcome.