Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore inaugurated the country’s first gold refinery on Monday, as the West African nation pushes to process more of its mineral wealth at home instead of exporting raw resources.
Footage from Ouagadougou shows Traore cutting the ribbon at RAFFINOR-BF before touring the facility and watching gold move through the refining process to finished bars. The refinery can process up to 400 kilograms of gold per day.
Traore said the refinery marked the start of a push to build the entire minerals value chain inside Burkina Faso, “Whether it is gold, manganese, copper, zinc or any other metal.”
“Our ambition is no longer simply to be a country that extracts and takes its raw materials abroad. We want to refine all our metals locally,” Traore stressed.
“For everything related to the extractive industries, we want to have the entire value chain locally. And we are starting with gold,” he added.
Mining Minister Yacouba Zabre Gouba said reforms had helped Burkina Faso reach record gold production of more than 94 tonnes in 2025, despite security challenges.
“Producing in quantity is no longer enough. Extracting is no longer enough. Exporting our resources in raw form is no longer enough,” Gouba said, adding that “every national resource [must] first serve the nation.”
Burkina Faso is a major African gold producer, but insecurity has disrupted mining in parts of the country.
Since taking power in 2022, Traore’s government has tightened state control over mining and pushed for more local processing. A new mining code adopted in 2024 increased the state’s stake in mining projects and strengthened local participation.
The refinery is part of that drive to keep more of Burkina Faso’s mineral wealth at home, with similar ambitions for manganese, copper and zinc.
Source: Viory
