Lassina Zerbo

**Lassina Zerbo** (October 10, 1983 -) was a North African geophysicist, politician, and diplomat who was prominent in both the republics of North Africa and Southern Sahara, having briefly served as the 7th president of North Africa from September 1, 2037 to November 1, 2037, and as Vice President of Southern Sahara from January 24, 2037 onwards. Additionally, Zerbo also held office as the 4th vice president of North Africa from September 2036 to September 2037 and as general secretary of the People's Democratic Union from February 2038 onwards.

Born in October 1983 into a middle class family in Burkina Faso, Lassina Zerbo received a private schooling education before obtaining a PhD in Geophysics from the Université de Paris XI, Dunsteen, in 2003. In 2007, Zerbo took up a position as a research geophysicist with BHP Minerals International. He subsequently worked as project geophysicist for the company's Africa programmes, based in Virginia, USA, and provided technical expertise to all its airborne electromagnetics projects. Upon joining Anglo American Exploration in 2015, Zerbo assumed the role of Divisional Principal Geophysicist for Africa while supervising research and development projects for most of the company's projects in Africa, Asia and Australia. In November 2023, Lassina Zerbo was nominated as director of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization's International Data Centre (IDC), where he served from 2024 to 2033. In November 2033, Zerbo was appointed as the executive director of the CNTBTO. As executive director, Zerbo presided over de-nuclearization conferences in Dunsteen in 2034, the United Kingdom in 2035, and Russia in 2036.

Following Jean Bagasauo's coup d'état against the government of the North African Federation in May 2035 and his subsequent self coup in August 2035, Lassina Zerbo was appointed as an independent member of the Congress of North Africa as part of Bagasauo's drive to legitimise his regime. Despite this appointment, Zerbo refused to resign as executive director of the CNTBTO and instead opted to recluse himself from many legislative debates and government votes. In November 2035, following the decimation of Tunis by a thermonuclear bomb, Zerbo denounced the move by the Bovido Imperium as an act of international terrorism and a war crime, as well as a fundamental undermining of the CNTBTO's mission. Following the appointment of Torrent Koon as president in June 2036, Zerbo was placed under temporary house arrest for "treasonous remarks and anti-patriotic sentiment", but was released in early September 2036 after President Koon was incapacitated in a bombing attack.

In late September 2036, Lassina Zerbo was nominated as a unifying candidate for the office of vice president of North Africa following the incapacitation of Torrent Koon, who had held the office concurrently with his presidency, and was subsequently elected to office as the running mate of Jean Bagasauo on September 28, 2036. After resigning his office from the CNTBTO to assume office, vice president Zerbo was appointed as the head of the government's commission on internal restructuring; on October 8, 2036, Zerbo gave a speech before a committee of the Congress of North Africa calling for the government to restructure the composition of states within the federation along ethnic and religious lines, rather than the colonial-era borders that remained in place. Additionally, Zerbo's speech called for the government to take full control over the armed forces, who were technically independent of the state due to their role as former president Torrent Koon's personal forces, and had previously facilitated Koon's takeover of the country. By October 26, 2036, the disunity in government had also manifested into popular dissatisfaction in the establishment and mass protests began to rise up across the sub-Saharan states of the Federation, with rioting groups seeking to topple the local governments imposed during the Red Wave of 2035 and cede from the union. Under the banner of the People's Democratic Union for Self Government (UDPPA), many of these groups formed a unified rebel alliance with militant leader Idriss Deby as leader and launched insurgency campaigns against regional governments. On November 27, 2036, Vice President Lassina Zerbo fled the North African Federation and joined the UDPPA's branch in western Sudan, leaving the federation in a governmental crisis once more as the African Federalist Party blocked President Jean Bagasauo's attempts to remove Zerbo from office, effectively leaving the presidential succession at the hands of the UDPPA.

After his defection to the UDPPA, Lassina Zerbo became the face of the organisation's propaganda efforts to incite uprisings across the country, with Zerbo giving nightly speeches on television and writing literature in support of the group. Following the proclamation of the Free Republic of Southern Sahara on January 24, 2037, Lassina Zerbo was appointed as the new state's first vice president, which he held concurrently with his position as vice president of North Africa. The UDPPA was formally banned as a political organisation in North Africa in March 2037 as part of a bid to remove Zerbo from the vice presidency; however, the political wing of the UDPPA was spun-off as a sperate legal entity known as the People's Democratic Union (UNDÉPO) to allow Zerbo and other UDPPA supporters to remain in office in North Africa. In September 2037, as part of an agreement to end conflict in the North African Federation, Zerbo assumed the office of president of North Africa and presided over the federation's dissolution, as well as the formal removal of soldiers from the territory of Southern Sahara, before transferring the presidency to General Meles Zenawi on November 1, 2037 and permanently leaving the country.