Lessons from Reformers: Burkina Faso Works to Meet the EITI Standard

While the mining sector has always been an important source of revenue in Burkina Faso, massive increases in gold production in recent years have led to a rapid expansion in the country’s industrial mining sector. However, this growth also came with significant challenges, as tons of gold began leaving the country undeclared and undetected due to gaps in mining sector management. In the long term, these losses take money out of the hands of citizens, hundreds of thousands of whom work in the mining sector. By 2016, as the fourth largest producer of gold in sub-Saharan Africa, Burkina Faso needed to address these issues.

Since then, Burkina Faso has worked to strengthen mining sector governance through the EITI, a membership organization representing the global standard in promoting open and accountable management of oil, gas, and mineral revenue. Several recent reforms have brought Burkina Faso closer to achieving the EITI Standard. In 2015, the Parliament passed a new mining code that requires all contracts between mining companies and the government to be published in the country’s official Gazette. The Parliament also passed reforms that would establish an environmental rehabilitation fund and improve security at mining sites.

Each of these reforms moved Burkina Faso closer to meeting the EITI Standard. Still, reformers believe that greater civil society organization engagement in enforcing the EITI Standard would make Burkina Faso’s participation in EITI even stronger. To that end, Burkina Faso made a commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... in its 2019 OGP action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... to make information about the mining sector and its EITI involvement more accessible. In particular, EITI-Burkina Faso, in collaboration with the government, will publish mining sector information and data on the national EITI website. These parties also plan to publish simplified versions of their upcoming EITI report in several local languages.