1982 Upper Voltan coup d'état 1982 Upper Voltan coup d'état The 1982 Upper Voltan coup d'état took place in the Republic of Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) on 7 November 1982. The coup, led by the little-known Colonel Gabriel Yoryan Somé and a slew of other junior officers within the military, many of them political radicals, overthrew the regime of Colonel Saye Zerbo. Zerbo had previously taken power just under two years prior to his own downfall. Upper Volta, formerly a colony of France, had gone through several coups since independence in 1960. In 1966, the single-party dictatorship of President Maurice Yaméogo had been ended
Lake Volta Dam holds back both the White Volta River and the Black Volta River, which formerly converged where the middle of the reservoir now lies, to form the single Volta River. The present Volta River flows from the outlets of the dam's powerhouse and spillways to the Atlantic Ocean in southern Ghana. The main islands within the lake are Dodi, Dwarf, and Kporve. Digya National Park lies on part of the lake's western shore. The lake is formed by the Akosombo Dam, which was originally conceived by the geologist Albert Ernest Kitson in 1915, but whose construction only began in 1961