Burkina Faso Commissions First Gold Refinery With 164-Tonne Annual Capacity

Burkina Faso on Monday inaugurated its first gold refinery, advancing plans to better organise the commercialisation of gold in one of Africa’s top producers.

The West African nation is the continent’s third-largest gold producer, with output of more than 94 tonnes last year, according to the World Gold Council. However, authorities have struggled to control the informal gold mining sector, which has been affected jihadist violence and smuggling.

“Burkina Faso has reached a historic milestone in its quest for economic independence,” the presidency said in a statement.

Under Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power in a 2022 coup, Burkina Faso has nationalised several gold mines and embarked on a drive to revitalise industrial production, from cotton and tomatoes to textiles.

The authoritarian leader, who inaugurated the refinery in the capital, Ouagadougou, has pursued a domestically driven and anti-Western agenda aimed at reclaiming national sovereignty.

“Our ambition is no longer to be a country that simply extracts and ships its raw materials abroad,” the presidency quoted Traoré as saying. “We want to refine all our metals locally… we want to have the entire value chain here.”

Burkina Faso suspended exports of gold from informal mining in 2024 to “better organise” the sector, Mines Minister Yacouba Zabre Gouba said at the time.

Traoré had warned that vast quantities of gold were leaving the country “fraudulently”, which “helps to fuel terrorism.”

Burkina Faso is battling jihadist groups who control large swathes of the country and continue to carry out attacks, despite the mass mobilisation of a civilian volunteer force supporting the military.

Gold, considered a safe-haven investment, has hit record prices in recent months in a lucrative market that fuels various forms of trafficking, including jihadists in the Sahel region.

The presidency said the National Gold Refinery of Burkina Faso (RAFFINOR-BF), which has been under construction since 2023, has an annual production capacity of 164 tonnes of gold, with a projected long-term capacity of up to 515 tonnes.

The refinery, which cost 11 billion CFA francs ($19 million) to build, was funded by the state in partnership with the domestic private sector, it added.