DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Burkina Faso has opened its first gold refinery as its military-led government seeks greater economic sovereignty after severing ties with traditional Western partners.
“From now on, gold from Burkina Faso must not only be extracted in Burkina Faso, it must be processed, controlled, valued and certified in Burkina Faso," President Ibrahim Traore, who has ruled the West African country since a 2022 military coup, said on Monday at the opening of the refinery, known as Raffinor-BF.
Across West Africa, governments are taking steps to reclaim control over their natural resources by rewriting mining codes, banning exports of raw produce and boosting government ownership. Guinea and Ghana recently restricted gold exports. Mali said it was building a gold refinery together with Russia’s Yadran Group, and Ivory Coast announced it would open one next year.
Burkina Faso is one of the region's main gold exporters, but the sector has been disrupted by extremist violence, which has intensified since the military junta seized power.
Under Traoré, Burkina Faso has presented natural resources as a sovereignty issue. The refinery is part of the junta's campaign to reduce its dependence on foreign states and companies, in particular the West, and to process natural resources at home, instead of exporting raw produce.
“Natural resources belong to the people,” Traore said. “They must contribute to improve their living conditions, with respect for the environment, social justice and in the interest of future generations.”
Built on five hectares in the capital Ouagadougou, the refinery has a capacity of 164 tonnes of gold per year, the presidency said, with a target capacity of 515 tonnes. Burkina Faso produced 94 tonnes of gold last year, according to the authorities.
Raffinor-BF cost more than 11 billion CFA francs ($19 million) and was financed by the government, including through the National Precious Metals Company, known as SONASP, and by the private sector.
The West African country of 23 million people has endured years of violence by extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Government forces have also been accused of extrajudicial killings.
Since taking power in 2022, the junta has been accused of killings of civilians,cracking down on political dissent and journalists, shutting down independent media outlets and forcibly conscripting dissidents into the army to fight Islamic militants.
FILE - Miners work at a gold mine in Bouda, Burkina Faso on Feb. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)
GENEVA (AP) — FIFA lawyers claimed UEFA is harassing Gianni Infantino, in a court filing urging a Florida judge to deny the European soccer body’s request for evidence discovery about a World Cup private investor plan that has rocked the sport.
The 21-page filing to the court in the Southern District of Florida late Monday, and seen by The Associated Press, said UEFA was wrong to suggest the FIFA president sought to profit personally from the project that provoked a furor in July and was dropped within days.
UEFA later asked for authorization of discovery with three courts — including in Manhattan, against Josh Kushner’s New York-based investment firm, and Miami, where FIFA has an office base — aiming to help prepare a criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland for financial mismanagement.
“UEFA’s conduct demonstrates that its (court filing) was made in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment,” lawyers for FIFA argue in the document.
The filing also notes the Nov. 18 deadline for potential candidates to enter the FIFA presidential election contest next March in Morocco, where Infantino plans to seek a fourth and final term in office through 2031.
“This court should reject any attempt to influence FIFA’s presidential election based on these grounds,” FIFA lawyers wrote in the filing Monday.
UEFA led a global backlash to the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) plan and is preparing an election challenge to Infantino, who had seemed set to win unopposed until creating the biggest crisis of his near 11-year presidency.
Infantino’s plan was to create the FFE subsidiary and sell at least 20% of nonprofit FIFA’s future commercial rights for $4.2 billion to investors led by Josh Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
UEFA’s court filings one month ago claimed the value was a “fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit,” amid speculation he eyed a CEO-like role at the subsidiary on a higher salary than his current $6 million presidential pay package.
FIFA lawyers claimed UEFA “falsely asserts that Mr. Infantino sought to have a personal financial interest in the FFE project.”
The secretive plan was revealed July 28 by media reports and led FIFA’s now-ousted chief operating officer Kevin Lamour to criticize Infantino’s leadership. The FIFA boss’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs partner, also resigned in protest at the deal he said was bad for soccer.
Infantino later apologized for errors in how the sell-off plan was handled, and has since offered to open an independent external review of the soccer body’s governance.
FIFA has consistently said the commercial spinoff was intended to accelerate development of soccer worldwide, outside the wealthy power base of Europe.
In a separate development Monday, Infantino wrote to the 211 member federations of FIFA accepting it could pay them more from cash reserves.
That follows a call this month by Infantino’s critics at UEFA, North American soccer body CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation that FIFA can afford to pay each of the 211 members a $10 million dividend from its cash reserves of about $6 billion.
Infantino had offered each member $20 million, from the intended $4.2 billion investment by Kushner and others, pending a mid-September deadline to approve the FFE project.
An Oct. 15 meeting of the 37-member FIFA Council, to be chaired by Infantino in Zurich, is set to debate proposals on finance and governance as he seeks to manage fallout from the divisive World Cup sell-off plan.
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
FIFA President Gianni Infantino poses for photos with volunteers after the Women's U20 World Cup final soccer match between Spain and North Korea in Lodz, Poland, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Beata Zawrzel)
FIFA President Gianni Infantino attends the Women's U20 World Cup final soccer match between Spain and North Korea in Lodz, Poland, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Beata Zawrzel)
