Ankur Desai

Its new report says the government and allied forces have killed more than twice as many civilians as Islamist militants in the past few years.

Ilaria Alafrozi is a senior researcher on the report and told us the death toll is likely to be much higher and that government forces are more brutal and violent than the militants.

Now, Global Affairs correspondent Richard Kagoi is in Nairobi and told me more.

Ibrahim Toure is, you would say, young.

He's in his later 30s, considered to be one of the youngest African leaders, you know, where the average age is about 65 years.

He has sort of built a persona around himself as an African leader who's out to liberate the West African country from the influences of what he calls Western imperialism and neocolonialism.

So what he has done is he has made radical reforms and policies in terms of nationalizing the country's mine sector, which is very rich in gold.

And he says he wants to establish gold reserves.

And so this has really endeared him, particularly to young people, not only just in Burkina Faso, but also across Africa.

So a lot of them see him as the revolutionary reader.

That was Thomas Sankara, who was the leader there in the late 1980s.

He's been able to build his personality using social media accounts.

He's reflecting what people say is perhaps a political shift that's taking place across the continent.

And his appeal also goes even just beyond Africa.

He seems to be resonating with African-Americans, you know, black Britons.

Yeah, so he's been able to do that over a period of time since he seized power in a military coup.

So it seems a real sense of cult of personality with him.

But is this likely to last?

And what sort of reaction has there been to him?

I mean, opinion is divided.