Remarks on the Day of Academic Excellence - Speech from Ibrahim Traoré

The Day of Academic Excellence (also known as School Excellence Day) in Burkina Faso is an annual national event presided over by the Head of State, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. The ceremony honors the country's top-performing students and teachers, serving as a platform for major educational reforms and nationalist directives. During the event held on September 4, 2026, in Ouagadougou, Captain Traoré delivered a highly publicized and and hard-hitting speech addressing the future of African youth, education, and social mindset. Below is a translation of the speech from Ibrahim Traoré delivered on Sept. 4th, 2026 in Ouagadougou, translated by CPI Regional Captain Penny Arcos.

Thank you very much, and we give thanks to God for this day again, which has given us the opportunity this year to come and celebrate academic excellence. I would like to congratulate you, the laureates present here, and those who could not be in this room.

Congratulations to everyone who succeeded in their school exams this year, and even more congratulations to the brave teachers. Brave teachers who sacrifice themselves day and night despite the difficult conditions. We are fully aware of this, whether it is the working conditions or your own personal conditions, which are extremely difficult in this particular context. Yet you make all the necessary sacrifices to give knowledge and the necessary education to this youth.

Congratulations once again, and may the fruit of your work be the success of those you are mentoring.

As for the parents, I keep saying it: continue to support these brave teachers through the education we give at home to our children. Because we live in a very difficult world, and education must be the foundation of all success for our nations.

A Shift Towards Science

We have initiated many reforms in schools in Burkina Faso. This is to allow you to be educated in very good conditions, from preschool through secondary school. We are making rearrangements, starting with the working environment. We are building modern school buildings so that you can wake up in the morning and have that pleasure of going to school, and also to provide a very good environment for teachers so they can be comfortable and teach their classes. We are also reviewing the content of everything taught to adapt it to our realities. This will continue gradually, but we are also making a very important shift—a major shift toward scientific and technical fields, and also allowing everyone to express their talent for the development of our homeland.

We keep saying this. Perhaps we don't say that literature isn't important, but we need to make this total shift—that we have very few literature students and many science students. This work is ongoing, and I have even said that, as much as possible, even for the next school year, if we need to close some Second A classes to open Second C classes, and recruit the necessary number of teachers, we must do it. We need many scientists, and I will explain why we need scientists in these precise moments.

But I could not speak about school without passing on this message, because there are like two generations currently. There is my generation above yours. You will understand why. We always caution you, advise you, speak to you. We have always spoken, and I hope you will understand the depth of our thoughts and take the quintessence of this message to build yourselves.

"I take to heart the advice of your class sponsor, who read his speech earlier — I hope you listened carefully and I hope you listened carefully. He spoke several times about human resources, the quality of human resources. And I recall that at the FRSIT [National Forum for Scientific Research and Technological Innovations], if I remember correctly, I also spoke about patriotism—a full head but a heart empty of patriotism. We do not want that. That is why we have initiated a number of courses in your curriculum, as well as the patriotic immersion at the end with the baccalaureate, so that you become very good human resources and also patriotic. I think the little one gave us a very good lesson earlier. If we say we love the motherland, we must do everything to protect it and never be the cause of its tearing apart.

Religious Hypocrisy

But what often leads people to deviate, or perhaps to conflict against their own homeland, or to love other homelands more than their own? We must address this subject.

Before anything else, I would like to apologize and ask for forgiveness from all believers. Forgive me for what I am about to say. To all atheists, forgive me as well for what I am about to say. The subject may be sensitive. This is what we are used to hearing—the subject is sensitive, don't talk about it. But we have spent time saying that it is only emotion, and we are always putting emotions above everything else. There is no sensitive subject, there is no taboo subject. I have a mission, and if I do not pass this message to you younger ones, I would have betrayed my mission. I am obliged to pass this message to you. After this message, many may not like me, may detest me. Many may not understand the message because their neurons refuse to open. But I want you, young people, to understand the message, to change your paradigm, to love your homeland, to work for your homeland. We and the generations above us, many may not understand because they did not have the chance to receive this type of message from their leaders or personalities of the country. So listen to me carefully about why I spoke of believers and atheists.

Because I believe in God, I believe in a God who created this world. Especially since, to this day, we have not been able to pass from inert matter to a living cell, there is necessarily a God. And I think the scientists present here will tell us how complex DNA is. Also, it is said that the way DNA is encoded is several billion times more complex than the most complex computer. This means there is necessarily a supreme being. And I suppose those who studied biology know the biological principle LUCA—the Last Universal Common Ancestor. If you read about this LUCA principle, you will understand that there is necessarily a God, since we have not succeeded in passing from inert matter to living matter.

But believing in God does not necessarily mean what we do today. I am speaking about religions—the poor understanding of religions, the poor teaching of religions. I insist: the poor understanding of religions and the poor teaching of religions. The use of religions for perfidious ends, for political ends, for domination. You must be lucid, you young people. I speak to you here in this room, I speak to the youth of Burkina and all of Africa.

You know, Jomo Kenyatta said something very important. He was raised by Scottish missionaries, I believe, because he lost his parents early, but he said that when the white men arrived, we had the land and they had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed, and when we opened our eyes, the white men had the land and we had the Bible. Do you understand the significance of his message? Let us not just read the quotes; let us understand the depth of the messages.

You will be told everywhere: "Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs." Even in Islam, you will be told only to think about tomorrow—meaning the afterlife when you die—paradise, while life on earth here, well-being, comfort, luxury, all that is not important. You are thus led not to seek, not to perfect yourselves, not to work, not to strive. Remain stagnant, and you are advised to go to mosques, temples, churches, to wait for everything from God. God will not come to give you what you want. If He created you with a brain and limbs, it is so that you can use them, to be useful to yourself, your family, and your community. For a being who is not useful to the world, who is not useful to their community, I would say they are an enemy of God. I said this in Ouagadougou—that God is angry with Black people. People didn't understand. I explained a little because we refuse to use our brains to work, and it is as if we were telling God that He was wrong to give us intelligence. And the Black person sits and still waits for everything from God. It is because we have been formatted to wait for everything from God, and God does not like that.

Economic Sovereignty Starts With Youth 

You are intelligent, you are here today as the best. You have intelligence. You must use your intelligence for yourself, your family, and your homeland—that is, the community in which you live. If you bring nothing more to your community, you are an enemy of God. And the pursuit of knowledge must be permanent. If someone tells you to sit and wait for a miracle from God, it is false, they are deceiving you. Persevere, perfect yourselves, seek knowledge.

Persevere, perfect yourselves, seek knowledge. Do you understand me? If someone tells you to go sit down and wait for your daily bread to come from God, they are your enemy. You must work. As long as you do not fight for yourselves, God does not accompany you.

Some religious guides will tell you that, yet they themselves live in luxury. Shouldn't that make you think? And those who do this, I also call on them to change their behavior. Do not lull our youth to sleep; on the contrary, make them work. I congratulate and encourage all those who are priests, imams, pastors, or others, but who do something else, who work. But do not just be there to lull the youth to sleep, because a poor understanding of religion makes us stupid—very stupid. It completely shuts down our neurons. We can no longer think.

It is this poor understanding that has led to terrorism, since they are convinced that when they die, they will go to paradise. They will have 70 or 72 virgins and so on. This is serious, because we have seen terrorists who, even when going into battle knowing they will die, put on metal genital protectors to guard their genitals because they have 72 virgins waiting for them on the other side. It's unfortunate, but they deeply believe it. And because they believe it, they say they are fighting, they kill, they kill children while shouting in the name of God. I wish the greatest leaders would come out, speak, at least make some speeches to tell these people that what they are doing is not the true religion.

Religion was created so that men could do good and distinguish good from evil. So that people could be useful to their community. And if we are not careful, how will we be useful to our community? What are we doing? What are we creating? Look at your daily habits. What do we, as Burkinabè, create to contribute to the lives of others? Just now, you have been given data gigas for research, whether it's for phones or the internet. That feels good today, it allows you to work, but we have created nothing ourselves. How do we contribute to humanity? Whether it is your means of transport or anything else, we have created nothing. We Black people in general, how do we contribute to humanity? If we do not change, we will remain enemies of God. And that is not good.

And worse, we have been made to understand that we are the first on earth, but that we are a cursed race. Ibn Khaldun said that several centuries ago—that we Blacks are closer to wild beasts than to the human race. And that is what facilitated slavery and everything else. And what are we doing today? We must change this paradigm. You have never been told that you had prophets, even though some seem to say that one of them was Black. There have been thousands upon thousands. But which one was Black? Do you know any? So you are led to believe you are born cursed by God himself. That is false.

God has never sent a people to earth without sending guides. Black people also have many prophets, many guides. But people will tell you—they will never tell you. We adults will never tell you. We spend our time telling you other things. And even those who say it don't ask themselves whether God really created him to be cursed. Otherwise, why wouldn't He have sent us guides? God sent us Black people many prophets, many guides. Unfortunately, we have spent our time killing them. We have never recognized our guides. We have never recognized our prophets. And here again, He is not pleased with us. He cannot be pleased with us. That is why we are living in incredible misery.

All continents are developing more or less. Others were in worse conditions than Africa. In less than 30 or 40 years, they took off. And Africa is still in the same misery. And everywhere in the world, when they want to talk about misery, it is images of Africans that they show. Look at our young people who take to the sea; they die by the thousands. Their bodies are washed up on the beaches. And we, African leaders, we sit and watch that. We continue to stuff ourselves at ceremonies. Unconsciousness has reached an incredible level. And when you ask some people about all this, they say, "No, it is God's will." Do you think God can be pleased with us in this behavior? Never. We let our young people die and we sit back. "Well, it is God who did it." We take everything and accuse God every time.

Please, God is very good. He created us with intelligence. Let us use our intelligence to do what we must do to participate in the life of the community. And you young people, you must understand this to properly use your intelligence to participate in the life of your homeland. And why were these concepts put into your heads? I mentioned the quote from Jomo Kenyatta earlier precisely because they wanted Africa to abandon all its riches, to just devote itself to saying that it will come from God, while they took all our wealth and left. Look at how they are built. Look at how they live. And we like watching their images on TV. We like going there, doing business, being happy, even going there to rest, to go live there. Economic operators will not say otherwise. Everyone likes today to take their flight to Dubai, to take their flight to somewhere in China. And we live in a pigsty, excuse the term, but it is the reality of the facts. Look at Africa.

Africa's Failed Leadership

But even we leaders, whether ministers or director generals, each one goes out, goes elsewhere, sees—for decades everyone sees what happens elsewhere. And when they come back, they go back to the mosques, the churches, to flatter you and tell you to trust in God, and they plunder you. I am talking about us leaders; that is our behavior here in Africa. This is not serious. Let us not exploit religion for perfidious ends to lull and dumb down our youth, to enrich ourselves and let them die. And they have made you believe so much that everything—put everything in God's hands, it will be fine. And we continue, we continue to enrich ourselves with our friends and everyone around us. That is how Africa is, and the children of Africa go to die in the ocean. Their bodies are washed up on the shores. It hurts me when I see these images.

Recently, I told some diplomats when they were talking about cereal crises due to the Russia-Ukraine war, I said, "I am sorry, but I do not subscribe to this concept. The African who is not capable of feeding themselves should die. We must be able to produce. We must not depend on others. We have enough land here. Why is it us who have to go order or get everything from elsewhere?" We have risen up and we want to take control of our wealth. We want to produce, we want to process. But we cannot do it without you, the young, without you who are rising. We need your intelligence.

Look, today we are industrializing, but we lack human resources. Recently, even with the MBO for technical functions, we launched recruitment for this brigade—thousands of jobs—but most are technical, and the talent pool is lacking. And how can this be understood? I looked at the baccalaureate results and statistics. Out of about 65,000 baccalaureate graduates, nearly half or more than half are literature students—Bac A. Bac C has only 571, if I have the numbers right out of 65,000. Bac E, which is industrial, industrial technology and so on, we have only 38. We will never build ourselves like that, never.

So when I talk about sciences and scientific baccalaureates, you must understand that at some point we must make the shift. Even those who did literature baccalaureates, from university onward, you can switch. There are vocational trainings, and besides, we have a program that will start soon so that you learn to do something. Even the educational system—we were lied to. We were put in an unproductive, infernal cycle so that even if one day we want to take control of our wealth, we would not be able to do it. That is an undeniable reality today.

Suppose tomorrow we discover oil in Burkina. If I say, let's extract it ourselves. There is no one capable of building the pumps to do it. We will go and pay for those pumps, those drilling rigs. And even if we extract crude oil and I say, build me a small refinery, no matter how small, to process it—I know the theoretical process, you heat it, it decants naturally with temperature, and so on—but no one can build the refinery for me, no one can weld it. We are mostly great theorists, but in practice, we are useless. Hm.

This is unfortunate, and that is our generation and the rising generation. This is the reality for most engineers you see; most of them don't know how to manufacture anything. It's all theory. Few are those who know how to do something. Do not be like us. Be practical, and we will put the conditions in place for you to be practical.

Otherwise, we are at this pivotal time today in Burkina Faso. We want to exploit our resources. Take copper. We want copper – to make electrical wires from it, right? But no one is capable today of telling me that they can build here in Burkina at 100%, that they can take the earth, extract the copper, and turn it into an electrical wire. There is no one. There is our manganese lying dormant in Tambao, and so on. Today, through Sopamible, we have decided to take back control of our resources. So many mines are opening. Certainly, there are technologies and chemical products used—the necessary inputs. We are reopening them, we managed to restart them, but to have the technical expertise, it's difficult. There will be jobs, but we are almost blocked by the system. The godfather said it: industries need human resources, but practical human resources. 

Pursuing Excellence to Develop the Homeland

So young people, get into science, get into practice, seek to understand. Seek to know, use the internet to train yourselves, to manufacture, to copy, to do everything necessary. It is in that way that you will be able to participate in the development of your homeland. It is in that way that you will be useful to your society. Do not treat a diploma as an end in itself. Excellence lies in the ability to influence and impact the lives of those around you and your own life. If you cannot do that, you will have had high grades and big diplomas, but you will have contributed nothing to the development of your homeland. We must develop.

We are on the right path. The vision is there. We need human resources, and I count on you. You and the older ones here are the baccalaureate holders. Advise the holders of CEP (Certificate of Primary Studies)  and those with the BEPC (Certificate of Lower Secondary Studies) to take an interest in everything related to our development, and even those taking the certificate exam, we must start now to speak to them and motivate them to go toward the sciences. All sciences—everything you wear, everything we do, is science. Literature nourishes the mind, opens neurons and all that—it is very good—but we need few literature students and many scientists. And it is not too late. Even if you got your baccalaureate ten years ago, you can convert today with a short vocational training to do something useful.

But never sit down and say you are waiting for civil service exams. We are moving toward industrialization. All that will soon become minimal. It is in the industries that we will recruit. And I do not want to see an industry in Burkina where there are many people coming from elsewhere because we do not have the gray matter to hold such positions.

So I count on you, be lucid, and understand one thing. The one who gets their diploma and sits down, thinking that God must do the rest, will not do better than us or better than our elders. Fight, seek knowledge. I insist on this—seek knowledge, it is very important. Seek to copy, seek to do, seek to create. You are capable of it. You are capable of what you cannot even imagine, because God has endowed you with everything you need. But it is up to you to work to unlock that. So I count on you to impact the development of Burkina Faso. I count on you so that in 2 or 3 years I can see a change and someone tells me, "These are those young people we spoke to. It is this generation that is doing something wonderful." And you are capable of it. If people your age—BEPC or baccalaureate holders—go today and win first prizes in robotics elsewhere, it means there is gray matter, and industry is robotics in a way.

The war we are waging is science, weapons, mechanics, ammunition, explosives—all sciences. But we are useless; we cannot produce anything. It hurts. But I have to say it bluntly because we were lulled to sleep, we were dumbed down. Science, science, and science. We need literary people, but not many.

Raising the Bar

Let's change the game. Let's change the game. That is why, to encourage young girls, we immediately launched the Kilimouso competition. Others wonder, "Why?" I am opposed to the gender concept because it is discrimination in itself to push the gender concept. Everyone is the same; that is the basic principle. When you bring up gender issues, it is to discriminate against you women. It is discrimination. No, everyone is the same. But we realized what? I spoke earlier about the A series—the Bac A, where nearly half of our baccalaureate holders are in the A series. And do you know that in that group, there are twice as many women as men? So the bulk of the group—the girls—are in the A series, while girls can be scientists. But we have to encourage them. That is why we launched this competition to encourage you to go toward the sciences and to encourage the teachers who will mentor you to succeed.

We will do everything we can. The academy has opened, as your representative said in their speech; it will open elsewhere, surely in Bobo-Dioulasso and in other cities, so that we have a target of engineers we must reach per year over the next five years. Burkina must produce a good number of engineers per year, so that industries flourish. We must have thousands and thousands—hundreds of thousands—of industries in Burkina Faso to produce everything locally, to make what we have. The African market is immense.

Do not look at others; those who want to keep dancing and dancing on TikTok, let them dance. Work. They will come and pay for the fruit of your labor, and they will keep dancing. It is unfortunate, but because we are speaking to all African youth, others do not want to understand; all they care about is distraction and useless things. We must wake up. We cannot keep dancing while they plunder our wealth. No, politically, we have done everything to curb that, to industrialize and take control of research. And we count on you, the young people. So I invite you to take this into consideration because you can, and we believe in you. Can we count on you? Then, the baccalaureate holders, everyone—it is affirmative now.

And we count on you. And I swear that we only count on you because you have the ability, you have the potential. Believe in yourselves. You are very intelligent. Even those who are not in this room, who think they are not intelligent—you are very intelligent. It is by working that neurons open up gradually. It is like a child learning to walk. If they don't make the effort to walk, they won't be able to walk. And you must understand this. Every day of your young age, your brain develops, and you must perfect yourselves. You must seek, you must work—your brain cannot get tired at your age. And it is through this that you become hyper-intelligent and discover the world. Do not let yourselves be dumbed down by what we said earlier; do not let yourselves be lulled to sleep. Go toward the sciences, help us develop, help us get out of this situation, be a model.

We Will Succeed

Because I say and I repeat, Africans are sitting, watching Burkina. “Will they succeed? Will they succeed?” We will succeed thanks to you!

With that, I congratulate you once again on this success. I congratulate your teachers and I exhort you to continue to mentor them. It is not only knowledge, but also education in the values of our society, in patriotism, because we want full brains and hearts also full of patriotism. I encourage you to continue to learn, to continue to seek knowledge, and please God, we will succeed very quickly—faster than the skeptics, even the most skeptical, imagine. We will reach our destination safely and very well. So congratulations once again. Good luck. May God bless our dear homeland. May God keep you for the rest of your holidays and for the rest of your university and school careers. May God protect you in all that you do, and above all, may He enlighten you, may He enlighten your spirit and your intelligence, so that you may actively participate in the development of your homeland.

The homeland or death!