Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 11 June 2025 the Burkinabè Conseil des Ministres adopted Décret N°2025-0598/PRES/PM/MEMC, formally completing the transfer of five gold-mining assets to the state-owned Société de Participation Minière du Burkina (SOPAMIB): two operating gold mines (Wahgnion Gold SA and SEMAFO Boungou SA, formerly held by Endeavour Mining subsidiaries) and three exploration-stage companies (Ressources Ferké SARL, Gryphon Minerals Burkina Faso SARL, and Lilium Mining Services Burkina Faso SARL). The underlying share-and-social-interest transfer agreement was concluded on 24 August 2024 between the Burkinabè state and Endeavour Mining / Lilium Mining; the June 2025 decree formalises SOPAMIB's full legal ownership. Executed under President Capt. Ibrahim Traoré's "sovereign ownership of mining resources" doctrine and the authority granted by the 2024 Code Minier (Loi N°016-2024/ALT), the decree marks the first comprehensive operating-mine nationalisation in the AES bloc (Alliance des États du Sahel) and signals that Sahel resource nationalism has moved from legislative code-amendment into direct operating-asset seizure.

Loi n°016-2024/ALT was unanimously adopted by Burkina Faso's Assemblée Législative de Transition on 18 July 2024 and promulgated on 31 July 2024 under the Traoré military-transition government. The 309-article statute replaces Loi n°036-2015/CNT (26 July 2015) and its amendment Loi n°012-2023/ALT (25 July 2023), and is the central legal vehicle for the junta's resource-nationalism agenda. Headline structural changes raise the state's free-carried interest in any new mining venture from 10% to 15% (Article 66) and grant an additional ~30% paid-participation right that may be exercised by the state or a state-mandated investor; mineral processing and sales — notably gold — now require prior administrative authorization; domestic-investor capital-opening, local content, and overproduction penalties are strengthened. Four implementing decrees (mining-title procedures, mining taxes/royalties, sector-approval conditions, capital opening to national investors) were under validation as of October 2024 and are required for full effect.

Loi n° 2014-138, adopted by the Assemblée nationale and promulgated by President Alassane Ouattara on 24 March 2014, is the foundational mining-rights statute governing all mineral prospecting, research, and exploitation in Côte d'Ivoire. Its 197 articles across 16 titles repeal the prior Loi n° 95-553 (1995 Code Minier) and establish the modern permit regime, a 10% state free-carry in all industrial mining projects via SODEMI, and the royalty + ad valorem fiscal architecture that underpins every subsequent mining-convention and fiscal-law amendment. As West Africa's second-largest gold producer (approx. 45 t/yr) with growing bauxite and manganese exploration, CI's mining-code architecture is a material determinant of supply-chain access for Western and Chinese industrial consumers of these commodities.