Burkina Faso, one of Africa's largest gold producers, opened its first gold refinery in a major step towards keeping more of its mineral wealth at home.

Although the move is celebrated by Africans inside and outside Burkina Faso, the BBC still managed to put a negative spin on it.

The BBC's headline reads: "Burkina Faso's junta leader opens big gold refinery in bid to keep mining profits at home".

Even when reporting a positive development, the BBC puts Traore's military status front and centre. And then frames "keeping mining profits at home" with suspicion. Surely a country's resources should benefit its own people.

Ibrahim Traore inaugurated the refinery this week as part of a push to process the country's natural resources locally rather than export them for others to add value and reap the rewards.

For one of Africa's biggest gold producers, the fact that this is its FIRST refinery raises an obvious question: why has a country with so much gold waited so long to refine it itself?

It speaks to the neocolonial economic model that has plagued African countries since independence, that the AES countries are now trying to reverse. Where African countries supply the raw materials while the processing and value-added work happens elsewhere. The wealth leaves Africa while the people living above the ground where the resources are extracted from remain poor.

Like Thomas Sankara before him, Traore is seeking to change that neo-colonial relationship and make Burkina Faso's resources work for its people. This refinery is a concrete step towards that goal.

So at Sovereign Media, we decided to give it a different headline:
"Burkina Faso's popular leader opens big gold refinery in a bid to reverse neo-colonialism."