Opinion | Where Is Our Tonga’s Ibrahim Traoré?
By Melino Maka
Political and Economic Commentator on Tonga and Pacific issues
In 2025, the name Ibrahim Traoré has become synonymous with a new kind of leadership — one grounded not in elite privilege or foreign dependency, but in dignity, discipline, and devotion to national self-reliance. In Oslo, his name now leads the shortlist for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet the world should ask more than how he rose to prominence. We in Tonga must ask ourselves a deeper, harder question: where is our version of Ibrahim Traoré?
Traoré, a 36-year-old soldier from Burkina Faso, seized power in 2022 not for personal glory but to liberate his people from a legacy of exploitation and dependency. In just under three years, he has shaken off IMF debt shackles, returned millions of hectares of land to farmers, planted over 800 million trees with Mali and Niger under the Sahel Life Alliance, and built thousands of schools and health centers — not through aid, but by cutting his government’s own bureaucracy by 60%.
He’s done all this without asking permission from former colonial powers or international financial institutions. He banned foreign mining contracts, halted the outflow of wealth, and made food sovereignty central to policy. And in the most radical display of peace-building, Traoré reconciled over 12,000 armed fighters into civilian life — not by force, but by giving them work, dignity, and a future.
But what truly made history this year was not only what he achieved — it was who recognized it. On July 1st, 2025, in the heart of the Vatican during the Feast of All Saints, Pope Leo XIV broke precedent. In a powerful moment that echoed through the halls of history, the Holy Father declared:
“When I pray for peace, the face of a young soldier from Burkina Faso appears in my mind. He does not preach through laws or scripture, but through sweat and soil. He has never stepped foot inside the churches of Rome, yet he acts as if the world’s poor are his sanctuary.”
With these words, the Vatican formally nominated Traoré for the Nobel Peace Prize — the first time a sitting African leader, let alone one who rose through a military coup, was officially endorsed by the Holy See. It was a moral turning point that shook global diplomacy: Rome had spoken not in favor of an ideology, but of integrity and action.
Across the world, reactions have varied — cautious admiration from France, calculated acknowledgement from the U.S., full-throated support from Brazil. Yet the message is the same: the old order is shifting.
And so we must ask ourselves here in the Pacific, in Tonga:
Where is our own version of this vision?
Who among us is willing to reject dependency, to reclaim our land, to build schools before stadiums, and to elevate our people before profits?
We do not need a military coup. But we do need courageous leadership. We need a generation that sees sovereignty not as a slogan, but as a strategy. Traoré didn’t wait for permission. He led with purpose — and now the world is following his example.
If a farmer in uniform from one of the poorest nations in the world can do this in under three years, what are we waiting for?
