Burkina Faso's junta leader, Capt Ibrahim Traoré, has opened a gold refinery called Raffinor-BF, built for over 11bn CFA francs ($19m) with state and private-sector funding, that can process 164 tonnes a year and may expand to 515 tonnes. The plant is meant to end the export of raw gold and to bring under state control a sector where smuggling, which the government says helps fund an Islamist insurgency, has made output hard to track. It matters because Burkina Faso, a landlocked Sahel country, is following neighbours such as Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Ivory Coast in trying to capture more value from gold at a time of record global prices.