After extraction, West Africa bets on gold refining
On Monday 28 September, Captain Traoré inaugurated Burkina Faso’s first gold refinery, with the stated aim of keeping the entire value chain in the country, limiting trafficking and bringing more gold into the formal market. West African states including Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and Ivory Coast have or will soon have refineries, and state gold reserves rose from 663 tonnes in 2022 to 738 tonnes in 2025. The text notes that refining generally adds less than 10% in value and that these reserves remain modest relative to more than 5,000 tonnes of gold traded on world markets in 2025.
Why it matters: This is a commodities story about West African efforts to capture more value and control gold flows, though the reserves remain too small to affect global prices.