Burkina Faso and the new scramble for Africa

Key Markets report for Monday, 28 April 2025

​On April 3, US Senate Armed Services Committee had a public hearing at which the head of AFRICOM, General Michael Langley complained that Burkina Faso's revenues from exploitation of her mineral resources do not benefit the population but is being used instead to strengthen the power of the ruling regime. The following exchange encapsulated the thinking at the US defense establishment:

​Chairman Wicker: "I can imagine a situation in which a ruling elite of a country is receiving gratuities on the side... in order to benefit the strongmen... and not to the populace of the country. Does that sort of corruption and bribery go on?"

Gen. Michael Langley: "Absolutely, chairman. You know, I see this [mumbles unintelligibly] cap'm Traore in Burkina Faso... whether it's um, aah.. their gold reserves, that's almost all proceeds are just in exchange aah, to protect the junta regime..."

​It wasn't exactly oratorical fireworks from General Langley, but we got the gyst: his heart bleeds for the people of Burkina Faso who don't enjoy the bounties of their country's natural resource wealth. That's very bad and wrong. Burkina Faso's government responded on 15 April. Their Foreign Ministry issued a press release denying the US general's accusations​:​

"The Ministry strongly protests against these erroneous statements, which are aimed at undermining the image of the Government of Burkina Faso. This is especially true of efforts to combat corruption and protect the interests of the people of Burkina Faso​.​.."​

Of course, we don't need the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal to tell us who the good guys are. Ibrahim Traore is a "strongman," and we much prefer weakmen. Indeed, Burkina Faso's dictator has become quite a problem for western interests.

Not all black lives matter.

Traore could become a bad example

Traore has become not only Burkina Faso's strongman, his struggle against Western colonialism has become a symbol and a role model for native resistance movements, self-determination and for sovereign control of Africa's resource wealth which has been brazenly looted by the West for over a century.

Soon after he came to power, Traore gave a speech in which he said, "...For a long time, it was said that we were not a gold producing country. But for some time now, gold has become the leading export product. But we do not have control over gold, whether it is research, production and ... refining. We asked ourselves a lot of questions and today we decided to put the whole chain together. ...

We want to exploit the gold ourselves, and today we are laying the first stone of the refinery. ... We'll refine it on site and we'll know what the real content of the raw gold that comes out is. That is very important ... we are in the process of inviting local gold miners to [mine gold]. A lot of gold leaves Burkina fraudulently, which also contributes to fueling terrorism."

Today, Burkina Faso has its own gold refinery; in 2024 it processed 142 tonnes of gold ore, yielding 93 kg of Gold. Traore said, "we will use our gold to defend ourselves."

Burkina’s economic reforms

But he didn't just nationalize gold mining and production; he set out with ambitious plans to restructure the nation's economy, using the proceeds from gold production to set up the Postal Bank of Burkina Faso with capital of about $25 million and the Treasury Deposit Bank.

He also launched wide-ranging reforms in the nation's agricultural sector which was next to non-existent. Traore's reforms include establishing the National Support Center for Artisanal Cotton Processing, and Burkina's first fully domestically funded $12 million tomato processing factory, reducing reliance on imported tomato products. To further boost agricultural production, Traore's government gave farmers 400 tractors, 953 motorcycles, 710 motor pumps, 69,000 tonnes of fertilizers, 10,000 liters of sanitary products and 10,000 tons of fish meal.

The (not so) good ole’ times

He also expelled French troops which were deployed there to ensure the loyalty of Burkina Faso's governments to France and to safeguard the interests of Western corporations. And while General Langley is so very deeply concerned about the equitable distribution of Burkina's wealth to her population, let's examine how things stood before Langley learned about this intolerable injustice.

France first colonized Burkina Faso in 1896 and kept it as a colony until 1960. That year, Burkina Faso became nominally independent, but in reality, her colonial dependence remained intact, suffocating Burkina's economy and keeping its population locked in destitute poverty.

According to the 2021/22 HDI report, in terms of Human Development, after 120 years under French hegemony, Index Burkina Faso ranked 184th out of 191 countries, reflecting low income, low education standards and low life expectancy. Nearly 80% of the population relied on subsistence farming and the country's infrastructure was next to nonexistent. What's worse, since the 2010s, Burkina Faso has been increasingly targeted by jihadist insurgencies, resulting in large-scale population displacements. Today, some 10% of its people live as refugees in their own country.

The native is to be denied franchise!

The problem for the West is that Traore's reforms could change all this and the country's development could come in sharp contrast to the crushing poverty and underdevelopment endured by other colonial dependencies. Western colonial interests deliberately aim at keeping commodity-exporting countries too poor to be able to develop their own economies and thereby absorb some of their productive output domestically. The risk is that they might become self-sufficient, not as easily bought with "foreign aid," and then their economies would begin to compete with Western nations for their own produce. This mindset was already formulated by John Ruskin's disciple and one of the pioneers of African colonialism, Cecil Rhodes.

In 1890, he instructed the House of Assembly in Cape Town that, "the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adapt a system of despotism, such as works so well in India, in our relations with the Barbarians of South Africa." In 1968, the British Government used more polite language to restate the same principle. An interdepartmental Whitehall group produced a document in which it underscored, the "need in developing countries for an economic and political climate attractive to expatriate capital, and the advantages of the status quo both to security and to low prices."

The same basic approach is being employed by France also, in the West's renewed colonial scramble for Africa and Burkina Faso's Ibrahim Traore is putting the whole enterprise in jeopardy. Burkina Faso is as important to the British as it is to the French: according to the 2016 report "New Colonialism" published by the British organization WarOnWant, seven British, LSE-listed mining corporations had mining projects in Burkina Faso, including Centamin Plc, Norgold NV, Ortac Resources and Glencore Plc. Why the United States is now intervening is genuinely a mystery.

15 assassination attempts and counting…

So far, Traore has allegedly survived 15 assassination attempts, including one that was thwarted soon after General Langley's remarks at the US Senate. But it seems that over the last 2 years, Burkina Faso has been able to restructure and revamp its internal security and stronger measures might be necessary. AFRICOM has therefore set up a command center in the neighbouring Ivory Coast and is apparently planning a military intervention into Burkina Faso. It is a proxy conflict between African people and Western capital, and the future of Africa's development might depend on the outcome of this conflict. Over the past two centuries, liberation movements in Africa stood no chance against Western colonial powers, but this could be changing.

Today, Russia and China are supporting anticolonial movements in Africa and elsewhere, but another element has emerged which has never been present before: today, we have a flood of African activists, citizen-journalists, YouTubers, podcasters and bloggers reporting on the events and raising awareness of the true nature of this conflict. As a result, all eyes in Africa are on Burkina Faso along with a groundswell of popular support for the government of Ibrahim Traore and its reforms program. The anticolonial genie is truly out of the bottle and it could trigger similar movements in more African countries, depriving Western financial institutions of their African collateral.

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Today’s trading signals

With Friday’s closing prices we have the following changes for the Key Markets portfolio: