Philippe Zinda Kaboré

Philippe Zinda Kaboré was born on November 18, 1920, in Koudougou, the son of a Mossi chief. Educated at the École normale William Ponty in Dakar and the Dakar Medical School, Kaboré was a brilliant orator and organizer within the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA).

In November 1946, at just twenty-five years old, he was elected to the French National Assembly in Paris. Kaboré was the principal driving force campaigning for the territorial restoration of Upper Volta, which French colonial authorities had dismembered and divided among neighboring colonies in 1932. Tragically, on May 25, 1947, on the eve of the territory's reconstitution, he died mysteriously in Abidjan at age twenty-six. The premier high school in Ouagadougou bears his name.