Four Years, Ten Receipts: Burkina Faso Under Captain Traoré - Part 1 of 3

It's been four years since Ibrahim Traoré came to power. He, his administration and the Burkina Faso people (the Burkinabe) have made massive gains economically, socially, politically, and militarily. Just as another past president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, Traoré did in four years what some leaders in Africa and in many parts of the world hadn't done in 30 years.

Whether or not anyone likes  Traore, you cannot deny that he is delivering on behalf of his people. He's actually doing so much that his people have been telling him to slow down. There are many, many ongoing projects going on at the same time. You can see it on the street.

No theory, just receipts. In four years Burkina Faso decided to own, feed, make, build and pay for itself, with its own people and its own money. In this first of a 3 part series of articles we’ll examine Burkina Faso’s accomplishments in Gold refining, Food security and Road building.

So, here are the receipts:

RECEIPT 1 — THE GOLD STAYS HOME

On the 18th of July, 2024, Burkina Faso announced the state's free share in mining companies rose from 10% to 15%, and Burkina Faso got the first right to invest. Thus, they increased their ownership in those mining companies without having to pay for it. 

Small-scale mining was reserved for citizens, and then the government decided to create SOPOMIB, a state-owned mining company thatmanages the public mining assets and directs industrial mineral operations. It manages all 4 of their gold mines. Its goal is to increase national sovereignty and public revenue from mineral resources. 

The record of their output is more than 94 tons of gold in 2025. In September of 2026, they launched their first national gold refinery, and they've refined about 150 to 164 tons a year, and the gold is 99.99% pure. The president has said publicly, "We want to refine all of our metals here at home."

RECEIPT 2 — FEED OURSELVES

At the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit, President Traoré thanked the Russian President Putin for grains of wheat. In the same breath, he said African leaders must not come back to the next summit without having secured food self-sufficiency. He asked, "How is it that our heads of state cross the world to beg?"

Burkina Faso received 25,000 tons of Russian wheat on January 26, 2024, for displaced families. Minister of Foreign Affairs Karamoko Jean Marie Traoré of Burkina Faso said the wheat consignment from Russia would help to push his nation towards "developing our own production capacity in order to halt once and for all dependence on food from abroad."

On December 31, 2025, Burkina Faso declared food self-sufficiency. Cereals reached 126.6% of the national need, and rice production passed 1 million tons. The government undertook a huge initiative to achieve food self-sufficiency. They provided 1,261 tractors to farmers, 485 boreholes (a machine to drill deeply into the ground to reach underground water) and 418 storage sites.

They also started a mango processing plant. Burkina Faso is now the world's number one exporter of organic dried mango. They produced 5,000 tons in 2025 and handed out 400,000 new mango trees that same year.

They also started a state-backed cashew factory, which opened in Bobo-Dioulasso in 2025.

RECEIPT 3 — THE ROAD THEY SAID COULDN'T BE BUILT

In December last year, they broke ground on the Bobo-Dioulasso motorway. It’s a two four-lane highway (meaning eight lanes in total). It stretches 205 miles (330 kilometers approximately) connecting the 330 kilometers’s two biggest cities. At first they started to contract out the work with a foreign company, but as many foreign companies do, they inflate the prices and increase the time that it should take for infrastructure projects. Their cheapest bid was 1,032 billion CFA francs, (approximately $1.8 billion USD) for a small two-by-two road to be completed in 10 years, paid for through a foreign loan.

However, the president said you have to be reckless to condemn generations not yet born to a 50 or 60 year loan. So they decided instead to build it with their own crews under an initiative called Faso Mêbo which is the president's public works drive. They used their own money, 200 billion CFA (approx. $341 million USD). It launched in December of 2025. They fully cleared the route by February of 2026, just two months later, on schedule. The crews worked around the clock. The president said we decided to do it ourselves because we trust our young engineers.

The great Dr. John Henrik Clark said that under proper leadership, proper inspiration, and properly equipped, no one can beat African people. Although Dr. Clark stated it in the context of military battles. Burkina Faso is proving him right in other human endeavors. It looks like Burkina Faso is proving him right with every new initiative, with every victory. Their victory becomes our victory. And their regaining of sovereignty and dignity of African people becomes all our sovereignty and dignity.