The Sankara movement
One monument among other gestures
SANKARA, L'ÉTERNEL VEILLEUR is not an isolated gesture. It belongs to a movement for the restoration of the memory of Comrade President Thomas Sankara, led from Burkina Faso and carried on by the diaspora. This page places the Rome monument within that whole, and points to what is being built elsewhere.
In Burkina Faso — the Thomas Sankara Memorial
The Memorial is rising in Ouagadougou, on the historic site of the Conseil de l'Entente, the very place where Comrade President Thomas Sankara and his twelve companions were assassinated on 15 October 1987. It is the hearth of that memory, and the project of reference.
The Mausoleum, where the Comrade President rests with his twelve companions, was financed in full by the Burkinabè State. The scheme as a whole, drawn by the Burkinabè architect Francis Kéré, provides for sixteen further educational, cultural and civic buildings: a tower, a library, an amphitheatre, a botanical garden, a thematic trail.
Ma brique pour Sankara
The campaign Ma brique pour Sankara — My brick for Sankara was launched on 17 October 2025 in Ouagadougou by the Comité International du Mémorial Thomas Sankara. It invites every Burkinabè, every African, every citizen of the world who recognises themselves in the values of the Comrade President to bring their contribution, symbolic or material, to the building of the Memorial.
A brick is exactly what this monument says in its own way: a boss is one blow, and it is the count of the repeated gesture that builds. In Italy the campaign is carried to the diaspora under the name Il mio mattone per Sankara.
Contributing
The channel for contributions is designated by the Comité International du Mémorial Thomas Sankara, whose decision it is. This site will publish that address, and no other, as soon as the Committee has made it known.
No collection link is published until it has been confirmed by the Memorial. On a matter of this kind, an approximate address would do more harm than no address at all.
In Rome — the Parco Thomas Sankara
Via Ugo della Seta, in the Montesacro district, the Parco Thomas Sankara is the only public space in Europe given over entirely to the memory of the President of Burkina Faso. It was named by the III Municipio of Rome, and its commemorative plaque unveiled on 17 September 2025. It reads: PARCO THOMAS SANKARA (1949 - 1987) — PRESIDENTE DEL BURKINA FASO.
A preparatory meeting was held there, carried by the Embassy of Burkina Faso in Rome in collaboration with the Comrade Minister of Communication, Culture, Arts and Tourism, with the participation of delegates of the Haut Conseil des Burkinabè de l'Étranger. It is in this park that SANKARA, L'ÉTERNEL VEILLEUR will be raised.
Where this monument stands
SANKARA, L'ÉTERNEL VEILLEUR is complementary to, and distinct from, the Thomas Sankara Memorial. It is neither its replica, nor its extension, nor its foreshadowing, and it replaces it in nothing.
The hearth of that memory is in Ouagadougou. This monument is a Burkinabè artistic contribution carried abroad: it carries the name and the face of the Comrade President into a public park Romans cross every day. What it exports is not a souvenir, but a living skill, a living aesthetic and a living memory, produced in Burkina Faso.