Shortly before his assassination in 1987, Burkina Faso’s president, Thomas Sankara, issued a warning. Rich nations, he said, were deftly deploying debt to control the developing world. Sankara urged a united front against Africa’s creditors — the only way to fight back against the “technical assassins” of private creditors and multilateral lenders that had handed out money to unscrupulous leaders and then demanded steep cuts and sacrifices to ensure repayment, all in the guise of helping poorer countries. “Debt is a skillfully managed reconquest of Africa, intended to subjugate its growth and development through foreign rules,” Sankara told the assembled delegates of the Organization of African Unity.

Earlier this month, also in the guise of helping poorer countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded a review of its deal with Burkina Faso. “The authorities are progressing in their fiscal consolidation efforts,” the IMF announced, with an approving nod to “the creation of fiscal space for priority spending.” In other words: the financial colonization of the world is back on track.

Sankara is long dead, but the system he railed against nearly forty years ago has only become more dominant. In a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report earlier this year, the organization put the total debt burden of the developing world at $29 trillion dollars, a sum unlikely to come down any time soon as nations face high borrowing costs and as climate risks loom.