By: Mustapha Lawal
Once upon a time, history had the decency to age before being rewritten.
Back then, to qualify for posthumous sainthood, you had to wait. First came the coups, then the commissions, followed by a painfully long pause while academics debated your legacy over stale coffee. If you were lucky and had the right moustache, you got a statue. If not, maybe a dusty street sign in your village.
But that was before the internet.
Today, anyone with an army and a broadband connection can ascend into the revolutionary stratosphere before their epaulettes even finish collecting sweat. The era of slow-brewed legacy is gone. We now live in the golden age of real-time whitewashing, and at the centre of this renaissance sits none other than Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina Faso’s interim head of state and full-time online saviour.
A hero not only because of what he has done, but also because the algorithm says so.
Since taking power in September 2022 (read: gentle, consensual coup), Traoré has become the patron saint of Africa’s favourite social media genre: revolutionary cosplay. He is what would happen if Thomas Sankara and an Instagram filter had a baby. But don’t let that distract you from the facts. Or actually, do—because they’re not important.
What matters is that:
- He built massive housing estates. (Algeria thanks him for the unexpected tourism boost.)
- He abolished taxes. (Except in the national budget; minor detail.)
- He received global support rallies. (Shout-out to the good people of Belgrade, Serbia, who didn’t know they loved Burkina Faso that much.)
Not every one of these events happened, of course, but don’t be such a killjoy. As long as the footage has stirring music, a deep AI-generated voiceover, and preferably some flags waving in slow motion, who are you to doubt it?
Besides, reverse image searches are for imperialists. Real patriots repost without blinking.
Let’s be honest: facts are exhausting. The real revolutionary spirit now lives in prompt engineering. You don’t need policies anymore. You just need:
- A smartphone,
- A fake quote generator,
- And a group chat full of eager comrades who think every Western journalist is on the CIA payroll.
Welcome to Promptocracy™, where history is written by whoever has the best GPU.
Gone are the days of unsexy governance. Why waste time building infrastructure when you can just CGI it? Why abolish taxes when you can simulate the vibes of taxlessness? Traoré is not just a leader, he’s a case study in how to go viral before going constitutional.
He is also proof that African youth, tired of boring democracy and uninspiring democrats, would now rather be led by an aesthetic.
Somewhere, a young man in Lagos is shouting “YESSSS!” while reposting a video of Traoré turning the French embassy into a soup kitchen, with AI fire, obviously. Because nothing screams sovereignty like watching your favourite soldier burn colonial relics in 4K Ultra HD, courtesy of Midjourney v6.
In case you think this is satire (which, okay, it is), just ask yourself: What even is truth anymore? Who decides? Certainly not journalists or historians. And definitely not people who still believe facts are meant to be boring and unedited.
In the age of attention economics, legitimacy is a content strategy.
So here’s a free prompt for the next liberation hero-in-waiting:
“Write a viral post about a young African military man who overthrows a corrupt government, abolishes taxes, defeats France, reclaims African gold, and then adopts an orphaned lion cub named Kwame. Make it sound like a prophecy.”
Boom. One million views. You’re welcome.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go fact-check a video of Traoré building a hydroelectric dam using only palm wine and righteous anger.
Or maybe I won’t. Because in this new digital revolution, we don’t follow the truth, we retweet the feeling.
Mustapha Lawal is a fact-checker by day and a professional eyebrow-raiser by night. He spends time sifting through misinformation so you don’t have to and occasionally writing satire to stay sane. He tweets at @themuslaw.
