Blaise Compaoré

Blaise Compaoré, born on 3 February 1951 in Ziniaré, is a Burkinabé former military officer who later served as president of Burkina Faso from 1987 to 2014. He joined the armed forces of what was then Upper Volta in 1971, studied at the Yaoundé Military Academy in Cameroon, and became a close friend of Thomas Sankara while posted north of Ouahigouya after the 1974 border clashes with Mali. He played a major part in the coups against Saye Zerbo and Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo. In December 1985, during the Agacher Strip War with Mali, he took command of the western front, where Burkinabé soldiers split into small groups and used guerrilla tactics against Malian tanks, capturing two of them. In 1987 he led the coup in which Sankara was killed, and he then ruled for 27 years until a 2014 uprising forced him to resign and flee to the Ivory Coast.