Did you know that despite his unspeakable crimes, King Leopold II was buried with full royal honors in the Church of Our Lady of Laeken in Brussels ?
A church !
You cannot separate Christianity from Colonisation.
🇬🇳🇲🇱 Mali–Guinea: Guinea and Mali have just signed a military agreement to unite their armed forces in the fight against terrorism and to secure the road linking Bamako to the Port of Conakry.
With Mali having one of the best military in West Africa, this partnership is likely to be beneficial to Guinea.
🇧🇫🌱 Burkina Faso is aiming big!
The country is targeting 532,000 tonnes of cotton for the 2026–2027 season through expanded farmland, subsidized fertilizers, and better prices for farmers.
Can Burkina Faso become one of Africa's top cotton producers again?
When Guinea Chose Independence Over France, France Tore Down What It Built Rather Than Leave It Behind.
In September 1958, France gave its African colonies a choice. Stay in the French Community with limited autonomy, or vote no and take full independence with nothing guaranteed in return. Every territory except Guinea chose to stay. Guinea, led by Ahmed Sekou Toure, voted no by more than 95 percent. "We prefer poverty in freedom to riches in slavery," Toure told Charles de Gaulle directly. On October 2, 1958, Guinea became the first French African colony to fully break away.
France's response was not diplomatic distance. It was deliberate destruction. Over a two month withdrawal, French officials stripped the country of everything they could carry and wrecked what they could not. They unscrewed lightbulbs from buildings. They destroyed the plans for Conakry's sewage pipeline system. They burned medicine rather than leave it for Guineans to use. Administrative files were destroyed. Public buildings were sabotaged. All financial and technical support was cut overnight, leaving Guinea without the civil servants, equipment or trained personnel needed to run a functioning state.
It did not stop there. By 1960, when Guinea launched its own currency, France's intelligence service drew up Operation Persil, a covert plan to flood Guinea's economy with counterfeit currency and trigger collapse. The plan leaked before it launched.
Cut off and isolated, Guinea turned to the Soviet Union for support and survived anyway, becoming proof that the cost of independence could be paid and the debt never owed in the first place.
The history books rarely mention what France was actually willing to destroy just to make an example out of one country saying no.
Now Burkina Faso is waiting for them.
This plant is called the “petroleum plant”
Its seeds can be processed to produce high quality biodiesel fuel that can be used in diesel engines.
The plant is banned in most countries.
Burkina Faso 🇧🇫 has officially taken a major step toward increasing local ownership of its energy sector.
Under the leadership of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, and with the support of Burkinabè investors, the former TotalEnergies fuel station network has been acquired and rebranded as Barka Energies.
The move marks the end of TotalEnergies' presence in the country and places one of Burkina Faso's largest fuel distribution networks under local control.
It is part of the government's broader strategy to strengthen economic sovereignty, reduce dependence on foreign companies, and promote national investment in strategic industries.
Every student who passes the baccalaureate in Burkina Faso now goes through something called Immersion Patriotique Obligatoire, a mandatory month long civic training program created by presidential decree under Captain Ibrahim Traoré. The 2026 session runs from July 27 to August 26 across regional capitals nationwide, and it is not optional. Passing it is now a requirement before moving on to university.
The program is not just for new graduates either. It has already expanded down to younger students. In January, over 58000 intermediate level students across the Kadiogo region started a six week version focused on civic values, national symbols, and discipline. Defense and security forces are personally delivering parts of the training.
Officials behind the program are blunt about why it exists. They point to a generation that has grown distant from state authority, careless with national symbols, and disconnected from the country's own history. The goal is to close that gap before it becomes permanent.
This is what sovereignty looks like when it goes past politics and into the classroom. Is this nation building done right, or is it discipline dressed up as patriotism.
Africa is one of the world’s richest gold regions but captures little of its value, as most is exported mainly to the UK for refining and trading. African governments are now pushing to retain more control and treat gold as a strategic financial asset https://t.co/snRkgEms13