I should start out by saying that I do have a natural bias towards Socialist and Communist revolutionaries just because that's more or less close to where I lean. I think their ideologically-driven spirit is something to be admired. With that being said, I try not to let this cloud the actual facts.

So Thomas Sankara, one of the more successful Marxists in Africa. Very ambitious, as most Marxists do tend to be, hoping to help not only Burkina Faso/Upper Volta (the name of the country I will be using will be Burkina Faso though in the rest of this answer just so as to avoid confusion), but all of Africa. Also a very prominent figure in the decolonization of Africa (although more towards the end of it).

Domestically, his regime did do a lot. Vaccination of people against diseases, planting of trees to prevent further desertification, increasing wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to the peasantry, encouraging local villages to build hospitals and schools, banning Female Genital Mutilation. His foreign policy was also quite aggressive.

Although it did make a lot of countries unhappy (mainly France), Sankara 's foreign policy was mainly centered around self sufficiency and pan-africanism. He nationalized the mineral wealth of Burkina Faso, and generally tried to keep the influence of the IMF and World Bank out of the country. His failures are definitely not to be ignored. His most prominent, weakening relations with France and Ivory Coast, are the stated reasons why there was a successful coup in 1987. Far from being the only shortcoming of the regime, Sankara also angered a lot of the local tribal leaders by forcing them to give up their rights to forcing the local population in labor (Although this is a good moral thing, the local tribal leaders still have a significant amount of influence in politics in the local level, and pissing them off can and will make things very hard for you). And, as with any Marxist regime, corruption was high and human rights were low.

And, finally, the extent of worker control. As is the case with any communist regime, worker control rarely does happen. Instead, what economic policy that normally ends up taking place is state capitalism. And Sankara 's regime is not an exception. Even during his rule, labor unions were outlawed. However state capitalism does have its benefits, normally for a very weak and underdeveloped nation, the state can oversee its development into capitalism to ensure that human rights abuses are not taking place, and to ensure that the economy is growing at a reasonable rate, not completely determined by market forces.

So, all in all, Thomas Sankara, in my opinion, is an ambitious idealist who I do admire for his passion to make Burkina Faso a player in the modern world, however his methods to doing so are questionable.