According to an official decree issued on Saturday, interim president Paul-Henri Damiba has authorized a new government that includes the same defense minister who served under former president Roch Kabore before his expulsion in a military coup.
Damiba was sworn in as interim president for three years on Wednesday, after leading a group of officers to depose Kabore in January. They claimed they were motivated by dissatisfaction with Islamist militants’ increasing violence.
After a period of democracy that had aroused hopes that the region could shed its status as the continent’s ‘coup belt,’ Burkina Faso’s military coup was the continent’s fourth in 18 months, following two in Mali and one in Guinea.
The new government will have to strive to contain the deadly Islamist insurgency that has engulfed large swaths of Burkinabe territory and depleted the country’s limited resources.
