West African Union

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The heads of state of Ghana and Burkina Faso tried to establish a West African Union , as it had existed as the Union of African States between Ghana , Guinea and Mali until the early 1960s .

Ghana (green) and Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta (orange)

By military coups were in 1981 in Ghana and 1983 in Upper Volta (since 1984 in Burkina Faso renamed) Jerry Rawlings and Thomas Sankara came to power. Both saw themselves in the pan-African tradition of the former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and cultivated a friendship with Libya's revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi , both heads of state initially pursued similar paths of socialist reforms internally and non-aligned independence externally. Together with Benin and Libya, Burkina Faso and Ghana sought closer political, economic and military cooperation between the "progressive states of West Africa".

A joint ministerial commission of Ghana and Burkina Faso therefore already committed itself at their meeting from March 31 to April 2, 1985 in Ouagadougou for the political integration of the two states, Burkina Faso should work out a draft constitution for a supranational political body to be formed. On January 16, 1986, Rawlings came to Sankara in Burkina Faso for a working visit. The fact that numerous members of the Mossi people, from whom Sankara also came from, lived on both sides of the border, on which joint commissions were already working together, played an important role in the project .

With relations between Burkina Faso and Mali deteriorating rapidly in 1985, Sankara sought military allies. During the war for the Agacher Strip in December 1985, when the Ivory Coast supported Mali within the West African Conseil de l'Entente , Burkina Faso found support in Ghana. At the next meeting of the joint ministerial commission on August 16, 1986, Burkina Faso and Ghana announced steps towards further integration. The Commission agreed to set up a "high-level political body" to develop measures to harmonize currencies and trade, the energy sector, the transport sector and the education system. English and French should become compulsory subjects in the other country's high schools, grammar schools and universities, and a common institution should be created for legal training. The armed forces of both countries organized joint maneuvers in September and October 1986, the respective "committees for the defense of the revolution" were to be merged. A complete unification of both states in one union should be achieved within ten years.

At a further meeting between Rawlings and Sankara in Tamale in the northern Ghanaian Mossi region on April 11, 1987, both sides reaffirmed their intention to achieve political integration of the two countries through bilateral cooperation.

With the coup in Burkina Faso on October 15, 1987 and the assassination of Sankara, the union project came to a sudden end. A counter-coup by some Sankara supporters supported by Ghana failed on October 27th. In December 1987, the joint border commission met to finally mark the demarcation between the two states, and the project of a merger was not taken up at a reconciliation meeting between Rawlings and Sankara's successor Blaise Compaoré in January 1988 in Tamale.

literature

  • Munzinger archive : Internationales Handarchiv / Zeitarchiv , Burkina Faso Zeitgeschichte, 25/86, page 2 (chronicle 1985) and 9/88, page 8 (chronicle 1986) and page 12 (chronicle 1987), also 2/89, page 14 ( Chronicle 1987) and page 15 (Chronicle 1988)
  • Munzinger archive : Internationales Handarchiv / Zeitarchiv , Ghana Zeitgeschichte, 9/87, page 5 (chronicle 1985) and 30/88, page 11 (chronicle 1986) and page 13 (chronicle 1987)
  • Gustav Fochler-Hauke (ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1987 , page 156f. Frankfurt / Main 1986
  • Katharine Murison (Ed.) Africa South of the Sahara 2003 , page 451 . Europa Publications Limited, Routledge 2002

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