Marcus Garvey understood something fundamental about freedom. You cannot beg your way to liberation. The hand that feeds you controls you, and the mind that accepts this arrangement has already surrendered. Garvey built the Universal Negro Improvement Association on this principle, declaring that our redemption would come through economic and spiritual independence. He was not speaking to individuals alone. He was speaking to a scattered nation.
Decades later and thousands of miles away, Thomas Sankara inherited this understanding. When he became president of Burkina Faso in 1983, the country depended heavily on foreign aid and imported goods. Sankara saw this dependency as colonialism wearing a different mask. Within four years, he transformed a nation by refusing to accept the terms of subjugation dressed up as assistance. His government launched vaccination campaigns that reached millions. They planted ten million trees to push back the desert. Women entered government and the military. All of this happened because one man believed, as Garvey did, that we possess everything we need to save ourselves.
The philosophy connecting these two figures is not complicated. Self-reliance means producing what you consume, educating your own children, and building institutions that serve your interests rather than the interests of those who would keep you dependent. Garvey preached this through his newspapers and speeches across the Americas. Sankara practiced it by banning the importation of food when local alternatives existed and requiring government officials to wear cloth woven by Burkinabè hands.
Our current situation demands that we revisit these lessons. Dependency has evolved. It now wears the face of technology we do not control, food systems we do not own, and narratives we did not write. The global economy positions Africa and the diaspora as consumers rather than producers, as markets rather than makers. Garvey warned us about this a century ago. Sankara showed us the alternative.
What both men understood is that self-reliance is not isolation. Garvey built international networks connecting Black communities across continents. Sankara welcomed solidarity from revolutionary movements worldwide while insisting that Burkina Faso determine its own path. The goal was never to withdraw from the world but to enter it on equal terms, with something to offer rather than only needs to present.
They paid for these ideas with their lives. Garvey died in London in 1940, exiled and largely forgotten by the mainstream. Sankara was assassinated in 1987, likely with the complicity of foreign powers who found his example threatening. Their deaths remind us that self-reliance is dangerous to those who profit from our dependency.
The question facing us now is whether we will honor their sacrifice through action or merely through commemoration. We have their blueprints. We have their words. The only thing missing is our commitment to the work they started. Building requires hands.
Our hands.
