To Decolonize Burkina Faso’s Schools, New Terminology Recasts Invaders and Spies and Bans ‘Poor Country’

Since the start of the school year on October 1, 2026, Burkina Faso has been revising terminology in history, geography and civics textbooks as part of a decolonization drive. “Colonizers” are to be called “invaders,” “explorers” become “spies,” and “colonization” is recast as “imperialist invasion”; the slave trade is renamed the “transatlantic deportation of Africans.” Secondary Education Minister Moumouni Zoungrana announced the overhaul, accusing textbooks of containing falsehoods intended to diminish Burkinabè people. Other changes replace terms such as “ethnicity” with “sociocultural group” and “landlocked country” with “continental country.”