Ibrahim Traoré is a ray of hope on the African continent, a governor of promise, someone who seems to prioritise collective interests over his own, someone who is putting real policies and agreements for change in place. Many Africans in the diaspora are happy to see a leader who is trying to change the status quo and fighting neo-colonialism. Having moved towards economic self-sufficiency, sovereignty vis-à-vis Western conglomerates, fighting terrorism, reclaiming culture in the face of cultural imperialism where local identities and particularities are lost to the former metropolises, and so on.
However, it is inevitable to be afraid as an African. An African governor who fights against corruption, plunder and neo-colonialism creates many enemies. The argument "Africa is the way it is because of wars and corrupt governors" is a comfortable one. This is partly true, but many of these wars are largely caused by European and US agencies and multinationals. We cannot ignore the fact that their economic and geopolitical interests have not only provoked wars, but have also overthrown governments in favour of more malleable governors, puppets to be paid in peanuts for the plunder of the country's natural resources.
Neo-colonialism, simply put, would consist of prolonging the control and domination of the old and 'new' colonial powers through economic control of a country.
Ibrahim Traoré is one of the few who is really fighting against this, having nationalised gold mines, distanced himself from France and its various tentacles, and raised the country's GDP. Renegotiating agreements on the exploitation of a country's mineral resources has already been shown in other cases to raise GDP, see Evo Morales in Bolivia or Gaddafi in Libya. However, making bodies that could obtain the same resources for much less, bodies whose raison d'être is to obtain the maximum possible economic benefit, pay a fair price can put the responsible party in a delicate position. And if you add renegotiating the unfair debt imposed by the ECB (European Central Bank) or a fight against the fact that your national currency is still French (CFA Franc), you enter quicksand like Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Samora Machel, Murtala Mohammed, Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, Félix-Roland Moumié, and so on. But these people, like Ibrahim Traoré, not only entered quicksand, they were seeds, and today they are change and hope.