cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3082851

excerpt:

Due to its interconnections with imperialism, racism, and capitalism, international development needed to be thoroughly transformed. Sankara discontinued the United States Peace Corps program in Burkina Faso in 1987. A Mexican American agroecologist invited to visit rural villages at the time recalled that a small group of American volunteers had driven a 4×4 vehicle over a meticulously dug irrigation canal, destroying hours of labour. Sankara was reportedly furious. The episode revealed the duplicities embedded in the Peace Corp programme during the Cold War years: naïve, inexperienced American youth sent to various destinations across the world for personal skills and career development and a fair bit of soft power diplomacy as ‘good will’ from the anti-communist US government. But too often good intentions devolve to dangerous outcomes, and often with little accountability. Sankara requested that the Peace Corps funds be channelled into an account overseen by a Burkinabé group or collective. This suggestion was rejected, and Sankara discontinued the programme in Burkina Faso. He was convinced that “Aid must go in the direction of strengthening our sovereignty, not undermining it. Aid should go in the direction of destroying aid. All aid that kills aid is welcome in Burkina Faso. But we will be compelled to abandon all aid that creates a welfare mentality” (Sankara, “One Color: African Unity,” August 1984).