Republic of Upper Volta Republic of Upper Volta The Republic of Upper Volta (), now Burkina Faso, was a landlocked West African country established on December 11, 1958, as a self-governing colony within the French Community. Before attaining autonomy it had been French Upper Volta and part of the French Union. On August 5, 1960, it attained full independence from France. Thomas Sankara came to power through a military coup d'état on August 4, 1983. After the coup, he formed the National Council for the Revolution (CNR), with himself as president. Under the direction of Sankara, the country changed its name on August 4,
Volta Redonda installing the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) steel mill in the middle of World War II, it marked the base of Brazilian industrialization. Laborers from diverse regions of the country came to Volta Redonda to work in the mill. When it opened in 1946, it was the first steel mill in South America. A heavily subsidized symbol of national pride, the Volta Redonda mill embodied the import substitution industrial policies that prevailed in Latin American economies from World War II until the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s. Since its 1993 privatization, however, the mill — now known as the