Between Afropolitans and New Sankaras Class Mobility and the Reproduction of Academics in Burkina Faso

ARTICLES Between Afropolitans and new Sankaras Class mobility and the reproduction of academics in Burkina Faso Michelle Engeler Abstract: Using the notion of Afropolitanism, which refers to highly mobile and well-connected “Africans of the world,” this article examines the relative privileges of university graduates within Burkina Faso across generational divides. Compari- sons emerge between cohorts graduating in the 1970s and the 2010s. While graduates of the 1970s enjoyed access to a privileged status through their local university education and a related network of global cosmopolitan qualifi cations and creden- tials, contemporary students have only limited access to this route of class mobility. Th e frustration engendered by this helps to explain the shape of the uprising that ousted the president of Burkina Faso in 2014, as the diminishing access to Afropol- itan identities pitches the younger generation of students into diff erent emerging constellations of political mobilization. Keywords: academics, Burkina Faso, class, generations, mobility “La patrie ou la mort nous vaincrons” (Home- Th e theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe land or death, we shall overcome)—such was the has also refl ected on the notion of Afropolitans.1 motto of the famous national leader and revo- He emphasizes the position of Africa and Afri- lutionary fi gure of Burkina Faso, Th omas San- cans in the global world and argues in a recent kara, in the 1980s. Th is emotive call to action interview that “Afropolitanism is a name for was resurrected, resung, reshared, and retweeted undertaking a critical refl ection on the many in 2014 as many Burkinabe, among them also ways in which, in fact, there is no world without students, mobilized and took to the streets to Africa and there is no Africa that is not part of overthrow a government that they saw as part of it,” and further, “Afropolitanism is a geography a corrupt political elite out of touch with their of circulation and mobility” (Mbembe and Bal- needs and that prevented their access to aspira- akrishnan 2016: 29, 34). tional promises for a brighter future as “highly Although the notion of Afropolitans does not mobile and well connected, successful young Af- represent an emic expression stemming from ricans of the world,” in the words of Taiye Selasi within Burkina Faso, I perceive its semantic re- (2005), a novelist and photographer, who in one lation to mobility and cosmopolitanism raised of her essays names them “Afropolitans.” by both Selasi and Mbembe as helpful to cap- Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 80 (2018): 77–90 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2018.800106 78 | Michelle Engeler ture what past students oft en represented and education and universities in (West) Africa and that of which present-day students dream. Fur- Burkina Faso. Th e next section focuses on the thermore, one of the concept’s critiques, which present-day campus of the public university in argues that the term promotes the rapacious Ouagadougou, including its politics, students, consumerism of the African elites who repre- and professors. Th e third section portrays two sent that “mobile Afropolitan class” (raised by, students of the 1970s, and the fi nal section e.g., Dabiri 2014, 2016; Gehrmann 2016), is in- concludes by discussing the reproduction of deed helpful for my purpose, as young students academics, the challenging passing of “Afro- also have materialistic dreams about their future politanism” or “middle-class status” from one lifestyle. In fact, it is the students’ dreams com- generation to the next, and new means of or- bined with Sankara’s ideology that adds to the ganizing for political change in contemporary picture and promotes a more nuanced perspec- Burkina Faso. tive “between Afropolitans and new Sankaras.” I return to this complex of themes and historic actuality throughout this article when examin- Life courses and the university ing students, both past and present, and how as political arena they position themselves in relation to their national history, and in particular to revolutionary Th e points of departure of this article are the life moments and heroic political fi gures. Th is con- course experiences of diff erent generations of tribution compares university cohorts from the students at the public university in Ouagadou- 1970s, when the public university was institu- gou, Burkina Faso, which since 2015 has been tionalized in independent Burkina Faso—back called Université Ouaga 1 Professeur Joseph Ki- then called the République Haute-Volta, or the Zerbo, abbreviated to Université Ouaga 1 Pr JKZ Republic of Upper Volta—with students en- (see, e.g., Bassole 2015). Ouagadougou’s public rolled in the 2010s. Th is article’s main concern university was founded in 1969 as the Centre is to understand the reproduction of Burkinabe d’enseignement supérieur and became an offi - academics and the related class mobility amid cial university in 1974 (McFarland and Rupley political transformation processes. By compar- 1998). Compared to the neighboring former ing the two generations of students, their life French colonies, this was a relatively late devel- histories and ways of organizing, this article fi rst opment: Senegal, for instance, established the reveals the diminishing access to class mobility fi rst francophone university in 1957, renamed through the local university, as the homeland no Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar in 1987 longer holds the promise of a well-connected (Ouedraogo and Traore 2010: 3). Th us, the Ré- and upwardly mobile Afropolitan identity. Th e publique Haute-Volta, or the Republic of Upper frustration engendered by this disruption of Volta, as the country was called aft er indepen- upward class mobility second helps to explain dence in 1960 and until 1984, did not have any why student union movements have lost much institutes of higher education before 1969.2 By of their good reputation and did not play a van- then, the education of the national leaders, or guard role during the 2014 Burkinabe uprising. cadre, was—just as during the colonial period— Finally, the article demonstrates the need for a accomplished at the universities of neighboring transnational and global historical perspective, countries like Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire, or in Eu- as national or continental borders cannot con- rope, mainly in France (2010: 4). fi ne the reproduction of academics, class mobil- In general, the literature states that the uni- ity, and political transformation processes. versities of West Africa (at least the European- Th e article is organized as follows: the fi rst style ones; Islamic universities are far older) section provides the reader with background in- were mostly built aft er World War II and related formation on the history and context of higher to the colonial administrators’ demand for local Between Afropolitans and new Sankaras | 79 staff (Eckert 2000: 244).3 Moreover, there were Following this brief regional, institutional, only a small number of institutions of higher and historic background of (West) African uni- education. In postcolonial West Africa many versities, I now proceed to change our perspec- of the newly independent states invested in the tive and take a closer look at people “making” creation of universities or higher education in- and “living” the public university in Ouaga- stitutions, and the transition from the colonial dougou. In other words, I shall follow Th andika to postcolonial period was also marked by the Mkandawire’s call to have a closer look at people “intellectualization of political culture,” to quote actually “animating the universities in Africa” the well-known Africanist Ali A. Mazrui (1978: (1995: 75) instead of emphasizing only the cri- 17). Hence, the fi rst generations of graduates, of- sis of institutions of higher education and their ten trained in France or Great Britain, returned dilapidation—not least in order to understand to their motherlands and inspired not only the the reproduction of academics in Burkina Faso. creation of local universities but also postcolonial politics. Th ey became the intellectual and political elites of their countries. An insightful “Th ousands of new Sankaras”: article by Andrea Behrends and Carola Lentz Today’s students (2012) sheds light on these developments in Ghana by describing the history of formal edu- Th e initial focus of my oral life history research cation over three generations of highly educated project was a group of older people who studied men and women from a marginalized region and graduated in the 1970s.7 During my fi eld- in northern Ghana. Th ey show that the very work, I supplemented these historical narratives fi rst of them were elites, whereas the following by interviewing current professors and students generations have oft en struggled to achieve or as well. Finally, this article also draws on partic- maintain some degree of middle-class status. ipant observation of present-day university life Th us, higher education was and is an avenue to collected during my fi eldwork between January higher status, but while the fi rst generation of and September 2014 in Ouagadougou, when I locally trained academics are oft en described spent a considerable amount of time on campus as sociopolitical elites, present-day students in- between more formal interviews.8 During that stead oft en struggle to make ends meet and are time, I learned that the university represents a not necessarily part of the local struggle to be highly political arena and that, both in the past part of the recently much-hyped “Africa rising” and in the present, many students are actively and related scientifi c discourses on the African involved in various associations, union move- middle classes.4 ments, or political parties that seek to actively However, independence and postcolonial shape the political landscape.

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