The Price of Waking Up: Why African Leaders Who Dream Big Often Don't Wake Up at All

Sometimes I sit back and wonder why is it that every time an African leader tries to do right, to truly break the chains and flip the script, they either end up dead, disappear mysteriously, or get branded as enemies of the state?I’m 19. Young, but not stupid. And lately, I've been thinking about Thomas Sankara, the president of Burkina Faso who dared to dream of a self-reliant Africa. He changed his country’s name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso “Land of Honest People.” He rejected foreign aid, pushed for women’s rights, planted millions of trees to fight desertification, and told Africa to stop begging. That’s bold. That’s different.And guess what? He was assassinated in 1987 at just 37 years old. By people from inside his own government, with foreign fingerprints all over the scene. Coincidence? Nah. You don't kill a man who wants nothing but freedom for his people unless his freedom threatens someone else’s control.He's not the only one. Patrice Lumumba of the Congo gone. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, who wanted to build a united Africa with one currency also gone. And let’s not even start on all the pan-Africanists, student activists, and journalists whose voices vanished into silence.Why? Because powerful ideas scare powerful people. Especially when those ideas are about Africans thinking for themselves. When a leader starts pushing for independence not just political, but economic, mental, and cultural that’s when the vultures start <a class="tc-blue external-link" href="https://circling.Let" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">circling.Let ↗</a>’s talk about foreign loans. Oh yeah, the sweet-sounding “assistance” that’s more like a trap in disguise. African countries borrow billions from the IMF and World Bank, and guess what? The conditions always come with fine print: privatize your economy, open your markets, cut your social services. It's like, “Here’s the rope, tie it around your own neck.”That’s economic colonization with a smile. We’re not in chains anymore but our budgets, our policies, even our schools and hospitals are often dictated by folks who don’t live here, don’t understand us, and definitely don’t care as long as the interest is paid.So when a leader comes along and says, “No more loans, no more exploitation, we’ll grow our own food, build our own industries, and teach our children our true history,” that’s dangerous not to us, but to the global powers who benefit from our dependence.I’m 19. I’m not jaded, just waking up. And now I see that the real reason some leaders “fail” isn’t because their ideas were bad but because their ideas were too good. Too independent. Too threatening to a system built to keep Africa down while pretending to lift her up.Maybe it’s time we stop calling them rebels, radicals, or dictators and start calling them what they really were: freedom fighters who paid the ultimate price for trying to help us stand tall.And maybe just maybeit’s our turn to pick up the baton because Africa never needed them ,they needed us !.

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