History Memes

Sadly, what I meant was that none of his achievements amounted to anything actual Burkinabae people experienced as genuine long-term beneficial changes. That nothing he did from this image lasted or was enough of a net good that even a week of some other guy couldn’t undo it all.

By "a week of another guy" you mean "almost 30 years of another guy", but go off I guess.

Yeah, I’ve done a ton of desertification remediation projects, and this is not the flex you think it is. Primarily that desertification prevention projects are always nice ideas and fade after a couple years when you find out how well most interventions don’t work. I’ve watched hundreds of people in the Sahel plant trees for big, well-funded events. Most die within a year or so because, as it turns out, small trees need water.

Alright, I guess we'll just ignore Sankara working closely with environmental scientists of the time and attempting to establish institutionally sustainable practices of forestry and regreening, including sustainable agriculture and anti-erosion barriers.

Planting trees is not some new invention.

No one said it was?

OK, so he planted 10 million? They’re trees - where are they?

Still there

I’ve been to BF a few times, it looks just as much like a desert as Niamey, and it’s bleak AF once you get north of Ouaga. Trees require years of labor to get to the point where trees take. He was probably just looking at issues with charcoal use and forestry issues and did the math. It’s nice that he did this, but this isn’t some mind-blowing unique thing. It’s what every foreigner shows up and tries to do as well in the Sahel, like they’re the first one to think of it.

Holy fucking shit, is this really what you're saying about a man who was born and raised in the region spearheading a regreening initiative in the fucking 80s when environmentalism in the West was only just beginning to take a larger life of its own; a regreening effort which had both contemporary and long-term gains?

Even if 10% of the trees survived, you would think that 1 million trees would still be around, yes?

They are

Had time to dig into this, and whew - this is simply not true. There’s no source for the 73% literacy rate claim.

Do you not know what 'by 60%' means

What happens when you increase 13 by 60%

Do I have to walk you through it?

13*1.6 = 20.8

Yet, the most literate group is children who had been in schools. Why are the adults, including the older adults running at 10% literacy rates when 73% of everyone was literate 30 years ago? We would see literacy rates that don’t look like every other Sahelian country.

It's astounding that you say " Why are the adults, including the older adults running at 10% literacy rates when 73% of everyone was literate 30 years ago?" when your own source notes that 33% of adults 25-64 are literate - with those aged 40-60 being those most likely to have benefitted from Sankara's literacy drive.

Second, literacy is not learning the alphabet, and in the 70’s and 80’s, literacy was only the ability to reach French, an abomination of a language.

what

Leftovers of the colonial past that the stats were only for French, and they included local languages later.

French remained the language of government and business both at the time and for decades afterwards, so I don't really know what you think that proves.

If you think it’s so easy, go learn to read french this week and tell me how that goes for you.

I can, and periodically do, struggle through a French article or two for my own satisfaction. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here, if anything.

What may have been misconstrued, IMO, is one of two things: It might have been teaching local language written in regular romance letters, which, again, is not literacy because there’s really not anything to read in local languages.

Fucking what

So let me get this straight - according to you, being able to read French isn't literacy, because it's French and not the local language - but also, reading the local language isn't literacy, because nothing is written in the local language?

... what the fuck is literacy according to you?

People sound out the things they read like signs, so it’s sort of half way to anything. OR he included people who claimed to know Arabic from Koranic schools. I promise you, no one can read Arabic IRL, but it’s an alphabet. You do occasionally out in the villages see people writing local language in Arabic, which is interesting. But it’s not the same thing as literacy.

What the ever-loving fuck

Not at all - it’s that while he was violating human rights just a bit (very popular at the time) to hold the new country together, it left him distracted and fighting for internal power, rather than doing things that were longer-lasting.

Demonstrating, once more, that you nothing about the subject you're talking about. Internal power struggles were far from a major effort of Sankara - to his eventual detriment.

Meaning that you can’t just think it was a magical utopia for a few years based on a meme.

What the fuck about this says it was a magical utopia?

Fuck man, are you literate?

His achievements don’t live on beyond memes that make it sound like Marxist African leaders had any sort of successes at all.

It rather sounds like you have a certain label that you're crusading against without regard for the facts on the ground.

No one needs to come by and tear them down, it al gets washed away because everything in the Sahel is hard on life and achievement. Nothing lasts. And Sankara is no exception.

What a bizarre view.