SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

7 domains mapped · Code: BF

These are jurisdiction-specific research-progress records. They expose first moves, likely actors, and institutional infrastructure where mapped; they are not a claim that every country has a finished statutory memo for all 61 domains.

Canonical domain beta-W from Mining & Rare Earth Extraction. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Burkina Faso's gold mining generates cyanide contamination, mercury pollution (artisanal mining), and community displacement. When environmental and health costs per mine are published alongside production revenue, W becomes computable.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Child Labor in Global Supply Chains. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Burkina Faso appears on the U.S. Department of Labor list of goods produced with child labor for both gold and cotton, with children working unguarded artisanal mine shafts and cotton fields instead of attending school. The cost is a generation of lost schooling and mercury and silicosis exposure, and it is addressable because the buyers of Burkinabe gold and cotton are concentrated enough to condition purchases on verified child-free supply.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Conflict Minerals and Blood Diamonds. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Much of Burkina Faso's artisanal gold is mined and smuggled outside formal channels, and proceeds finance both jihadist groups and self-defense militias in the Sahel insurgency, so the same ounce that earns a miner a day's wage also buys the weapons that displace whole villages. It is addressable because gold must pass through a small number of refiners and trading hubs that can demand traceable, conflict-free provenance.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Burkina Faso is a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking, and mass internal displacement from the insurgency (over two million people displaced) has multiplied the supply of vulnerable women and children funneled into forced labor in mines, domestic servitude, and sexual exploitation. It is addressable because traffickers depend on predictable corridors and on impunity that targeted enforcement and victim protection can remove.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Industrial Monoculture. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Cotton is Burkina Faso's flagship cash crop and a top export, but heavy dependence on a single rain-fed monoculture leaves roughly four million people exposed to world-price swings, pesticide debt, and soil exhaustion, with a single bad season cutting household income to nothing. It is addressable because the state cotton company SOFITEX and producer unions already coordinate seed, inputs, and pricing, giving a single lever to diversify rotations and rebuild soil.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Topsoil Erosion. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Burkina Faso sits in the Sahel where overgrazing, fuelwood cutting, and rain-fed cropping strip topsoil and advance desertification, and degraded land directly cuts the food and grazing on which most of the rural population depends. It is addressable because proven low-cost techniques developed in the country itself, such as zai planting pits and stone bunds, already reverse degradation where they are funded and spread.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Arms Exports. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Burkina Faso is awash in illicit small arms flowing across porous Sahel borders into the hands of jihadist groups, bandits, and self-defense militias, and each circulating weapon raises the body count and the displacement that hollow out the rural economy. It is addressable because the arms move along known cross-border routes that coordinated regional tracing and stockpile control can choke.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

© 2026 Erik Postnieks · Independent Researcher · Salt Lake City