In what appears, at least for the moment, to be that rare bit of good news, Burkina Faso’s voters elected themselves a new president on Sunday, former Prime Minister Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. The election of Kaboré specifically is almost beside the point; electing anybody is a big deal in a country whose voters have never had the chance to freely choose their president–Burkina Faso, formerly the Republic of Upper Volta, gained independence from France in 1960 and then slipped into a pattern of government-by-coup. The ouster of former President Blaise Compaoré via popular protests last year, after he’d held office for the previous 27 years, finally paved the way for this election.
Kaboré doesn’t come without some baggage. Specifically, the fact that he served as Compaoré’s prime minister and vice president in the 1990s, and served as President of the National Assembly and head of Compaoré’s Congress for Democracy and Progress Party in the 2000s, has already raised some concerns that he’ll simply be a continuation of Compaoré’s government. But Kaboré quit the CDP last year over Compaoré’s decision to seek a third term in defiance of the two-term limit established by Burkina Faso’s 2000 constitution, and quickly established himself as a leading opposition figure. And while his past government work under Compaoré may raise some eyebrows, it also means that he has some experience in actually running the country that might come in handy. It’s obviously impossible to know how Kaboré is going to govern, but the mere fact of his election is in itself a pretty big deal.
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The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
