UN General Assembly
1986

In this connection, President Thomas Sankara stated the following from this rostrum during the thirty-ninth session of the General Assembly: "It must be proclaimed that there will be no salvation for our peoples unless we turn our backs completely on all the models that all the charlatans - of that type have tried to sell us for 20 years. There can be no salvation for us unless we reject those models; there can be no development without that break". (&/39/BV.20, p. 3) That awareness has, since 4 August 1983, led the people of Burkina Faso to understand that the "salesmen of happiness" were in fact nothing but sad peddlers, going from door to door selling systems that really did not meet our needs and our realities. That is why Africa, that continent of hope, in two decades because the backyard of Western shops and retailed on the sidelines of a world that was being built without it.