Liberalisation of the Gold Mining Sector in Burkina Faso

Sabine Luning

Review of African Political Economy, 2008, vol. 35, issue 117, 387-401

Abstract: Since the liberalisation of the gold mining sector in the 1990s, the state of Burkina Faso has the task of allotting exploration and exploitation permits to private companies. International junior companies are exploring vast concessions in Burkina, and publish promising prospects on the internet. Scrutinising the presence of (inter)national companies both on the web and on the ground, the article shows how a set of concessions constitutes a ‘field’, defined as a system of social positions structured in terms of power relations. Concessions bring together a wide range of professionals in mining: potential investors, international companies, Burkinabe entrepreneurs and artisanal miners. The article describes how legal distinctions affect the power structure of working arrangements on one particular group of exploration permits in the central part of Burkina, currently held by the Canadian company High River Gold: the Bissa permit Group. It examines what happens on the ground when companies are allotted formal titles, whereas artisanal miners can at best aspire to obtain marginal places for their informal practices.

Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1080/03056240802411016

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Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

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