Burkina Faso opens $19 million gold refinery as Traoré pushes to keep mining wealth at home

Burkina Faso has inaugurated its first gold refinery as the West African country moves to capture more value from its mineral resources and reduce its reliance on exporting unrefined gold.

• Burkina Faso has launched its first gold refinery, aiming to boost local value creation and reduce dependence on exporting unrefined gold.
• The state-owned Raffinerie Nationale d’Or du Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou will process, assay, certify, and store gold domestically, with an initial capacity of 164 tonnes per year.
• This $19 million investment is set to generate around 100 direct jobs and over 5,000 indirect jobs, with future expansion planned to increase capacity to 515 tonnes annually.
• Gold forms the backbone of Burkina Faso’s economy, accounting for nearly 94% of its export earnings and supporting both industrial and artisanal mining sectors.

President Ibrahim Traoré inaugurated the Raffinerie Nationale d’Or du Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou, saying the country wanted to move beyond extracting minerals and develop the full value chain locally.

Built at a cost of about 11 billion CFA francs ($19 million), the state-backed refinery will initially process 164 tonnes of gold annually. A second phase is expected to increase capacity to 515 tonnes a year.

The facility will handle refining, assaying, certification and secure storage, allowing activities that have largely been carried out outside Burkina Faso to take place domestically.

The government expects the refinery to create about 100 direct jobs and more than 5,000 indirect jobs.

“Our ambition goes beyond gold,” Traoré said at the inauguration. “We want to make the mining sector a driver of industrial transformation.”

DON'T MISS THIS: Australian miner to start rare earths production in Malawi as country looks beyond agriculture for $30 billion mineral boom

Gold remains central to Burkina Faso’s economy

Gold is Burkina Faso’s leading export commodity and a major source of foreign exchange. The country produced between 94 and 100.7 tonnes of gold in 2025, with about 58 tonnes coming from 15 industrial mines and more than 42 tonnes from artisanal and semi-mechanised operations.

Gold accounted for nearly 94% of Burkina Faso’s export earnings during the first seven months of 2026, far ahead of other major exports such as cotton.

The refinery is part of broader changes in the country’s mining sector since Traoré came to power in 2022. The government has increased the state’s free-carried interest in mining projects from 10% to 15% and established the state mining company SOPAMIB.

DON'T MISS THIS: Trump stalls Britain’s $4.5 billion Chagos handover as Mauritius seeks UNGA breakthrough

Keeping more of the value at home

Before RAFFINOR-BF, much of Burkina Faso’s gold left the country as unrefined doré, with further processing and certification taking place abroad.

The new facility is intended to change that model by bringing more stages of the gold value chain into Burkina Faso.

The move reflects a wider push across Africa to process minerals locally instead of exporting raw materials, as governments seek to increase industrial activity, create jobs and capture a larger share of the economic value generated by their natural resources.