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By Ayo Kehinde
Burkina Faso has inaugurated its first gold refinery, with President Ibrahim Traoré saying the West African country must go beyond the extraction of its mineral resources and develop the entire value chain locally.
Traoré inaugurated the Raffinerie Nationale d’Or du Burkina Faso (RAFFINOR-BF) in Ouagadougou on Monday 28 September, describing the facility as an important step towards greater control of the country’s natural resources.
The refinery, built at a cost of more than 11 billion CFA francs ($19 million), is expected to enable Burkina Faso to undertake activities including refining, testing, certification and secure storage of gold domestically.
The inauguration represents the latest step in the military-led government’s push to increase national control over the mining sector and retain a greater share of the economic value generated by the country’s mineral resources.
The government said the plant is designed to process gold from both industrial and artisanal mining operations and convert the doré gold into refined bullion.
Speaking after inspecting the plant, Traoré said his administration no longer wants Burkina Faso to remain a country that simply extracts minerals and exports them to be processed elsewhere.
“Our ambition is no longer to be a country that just mines and ships its raw materials abroad. We want to refine all our metals locally… we want to have the whole value chain here,” Traore said.
Traoré also linked the refinery to a broader industrialization programme, saying the country’s mineral resources should contribute to industrial transformation, job creation and local development.
The government has pitched the refinery not simply as a gold processing facility, but as part of a broader effort to increase the country’s ability to control, process and market its natural resources.
RAFFINOR-BF has an initial refining capacity of 164 tonnes of gold per year.
According to the government, the plant is being designed in several phases, with a second phase expected to increase capacity to 515 tonnes per year. Its modular design allows you to add additional refining lines as your operations expand.
The refinery includes a smelter, an analytical laboratory, secure storage facilities and a jewelery unit, providing infrastructure for several stages of the gold value chain within Burkina Faso.
Officials say the facility will also improve the country’s ability to determine the quantity and quality of gold produced and strengthen traceability of the precious metal.
During the inauguration, the first gold bar refined entirely in Burkina Faso was presented in Traoré.
The government expects that RAFFINOR-BF will create approximately 100 direct jobs and more than 5,000 indirect jobs, as the refinery will stimulate activities in mining, transportation, logistics, analytics, jewelry manufacturing and gold marketing.
The project cost more than 11 billion CFA francs, or approximately $19 million, and was financed primarily by the Burkinabe state through SONASP, in collaboration with national private sector interests.
The refinery’s capacity is significantly higher than the annual production recorded in Burkina Faso in recent years, but officials say the long-term goal is not only to transform domestic production but also to establish the country as a regional center for gold refining.
Government data presented earlier this year shows the country produced more than 94 tonnes of gold in 2025, an increase of more than 30 tonnes from the previous year.
According to data presented by the government, around 43 tons came from artisanal and semi-mechanized operations.
World Gold Council data also places Burkina Faso’s 2025 mineral production at around 94 tonnes, placing it among Africa’s top gold producers.
The country’s dependence on gold has also made control of the sector a major economic and security issue.
In February 2024, Burkina Faso suspended the issuance of export permits for artisanal and semi-mechanized gold and other precious goods, saying the measure was necessary to clean up and better organize the marketing of the country’s mineral resources.
Reuters reported at the time that gold was Burkina Faso’s main export and that artisanal mining accounted for a substantial portion of regional production.
Over the past two decades, gold has become the backbone of Burkina Faso’s extractive economy, with industrial and artisanal mining contributing substantially to exports, public revenues and employment.
However, historically much of the gold left the country in unrefined or semi-refined form, meaning that some stages of the value chain – including refining, certification and associated commercial activities – took place outside Burkina Faso.
The government increasingly argues that the country should capture a larger share of that value domestically.
The inauguration of RAFFINOR-BF is the latest and most visible expression of this policy, providing Burkina Faso with its first national gold refinery and providing the Traoré administration with an important new tool in its push for greater control over the country’s mineral resources.
