Thomas Sankara, at the age of 33, became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta after a military coup in 1983 and made a long list of series of social, ecological, and economic reforms. He renamed the country as Burkina Faso ('land of the upright people'), and wrote the new national anthem himself. His many radical reforms were aimed at making his country more self-sufficient. Among his more populist reforms, he sold off the government fleet of Mercedes vehicles and made the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time, the Renault 5, the official vehicle for ministers. He was assassinated in 1987.
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