Burkina Faso billionaire Inoussa Kanazoe acquires key gold mines as foreign firms are pushed out under Traore

Inoussa Kanazoe, one of Burkina Faso's wealthiest businessmen, has emerged as a major beneficiary of the junta government's sweeping campaign to wrest control of the country's $7 billion gold sector away from foreign mining companies and into local hands.

Kanazoe's Soleil Resources International group has reportedly acquired the BMC and Roxgold mines, two significant gold assets previously held by foreign-controlled entities, as President Ibrahim Traore's administration accelerates a resource nationalism agenda that has fundamentally restructured one of West Africa's most important mining economies in less than three years.

The acquisitions by Kanazoe and other domestic private investors form a second tier of indigenisation that distinguishes Burkina Faso's approach from straightforward nationalisation. While the state, through SOPAMIB, the Societe de Participation Miniere du Burkina Faso established in 2023, is directly acquiring operating mines and exploration licences, the junta has simultaneously allowed domestic private capital to absorb assets that foreign firms are being pushed to exit. By the end of 2025, six active industrial mines were majority-owned locally while three were controlled by SOPAMIB. That represents a transformation that would have been inconceivable a decade ago in a sector that was almost entirely foreign-controlled from the colonial era through to the mid-2010s.

The policy trajectory under Traore, who came to power in a September 2022 military coup, has accelerated with each passing year. A revised mining code in 2023 raised the mandatory state ownership stake and redirected mining revenues toward communal development and a national gold reserve. An October 2024 announcement signalled the government's intention to review and potentially revoke permits held by select foreign operators, without naming specific companies, creating sector-wide uncertainty. An April 2026 decree raised state ownership in the Kiaka mine to 40 percent, up from the 15 percent framework that had applied from 2025.

The practical effect has been the rapid departure of foreign mining companies including Canada's IAMGOLD, Russia's Nordgold and Australia's West African Resources, each navigating varying degrees of regulatory pressure and security risk. Burkina Faso is simultaneously one of Africa's top five gold producers and one of its most dangerous operating environments. The country's security situation, shaped by a persistent and expanding Islamist insurgency that has displaced more than two million people, has made operating costs for international miners extremely high and insurance coverage increasingly difficult to obtain.

Kanazoe and Soleil Resources fill the gap. Their ability to operate in the current environment reflects both commercial opportunism and political proximity. Businesses that have maintained good standing with the transitional authorities have been in a position to acquire assets at terms that reflect the geopolitical discount foreign sellers are willing to accept in order to exit. Whether those assets can be operated profitably and sustainably at the scale and technical standard the foreign companies achieved remains an open question.

Kanazoe is a figure of significant commercial and social standing in Burkina Faso, with business interests spanning construction, real estate and other sectors beyond mining. The gold sector acquisitions through Soleil Resources represent his most strategically significant move yet into a sector that under the right conditions could establish him as one of the wealthiest businessmen in Francophone West Africa.

President Traore framed the mining agenda plainly at the launch of a national gold refinery project in 2023. "We will extract our gold ourselves," he said. For now, Inoussa Kanazoe is one of the Burkinabe businessmen helping make good on that promise.