Whether you like it or not, Gold is considered a COMMODITY, and unless you’re talking about fashioned gold jewelry, not in Bullion form, you’re playing a very dangerous game, LIMITING exports from your country.
Burkina Faso is not the only nation with Gold or Gold Reserves, and in the 2024 economy in which the global economy is clearly deflating, the appetite for gold as a currency is shrinking. Making matters worse, is that Burkina Faso is not a stable country, so it’s hard to determine that nations position on PROPERTY RIGHTS.
A lot of people imagine that a GOLD STANDARD fixes problems, but I’ll create a scenario for you: Imagine my country has a gold standard, but we have a FLUID system of when you can actually redeem our currency for gold.
Meaning that you can only drain my country’s treasuries of gold when I say so? What good is my gold standard, under that scenario, or maybe I just make it extremely difficult for you to redeem your gold.
What happens if the people of Burkina Faso start leaving the country and taking their Gold currency with them, and then the President freezes or makes their currency invalid? A gold standard only has value if the country respects PRIVATE PROPERTY domestically and internationally.
The problem with Ibrahim Traore’s gold strategy is that he’s recently stepped on the countries prior constitution, I’m not even sure Ibrahim Traore’s regime wrote or is interested in writing a new constitution, what’s in their constitution and if they or the people of Burkina Faso would even want to enforce their constitution.
A gold standard is not going to fix systematic problems in regard to PROPERTY RIGHTS in Africa. A lot of Africans conflate capitalism with IMPERIALISM and, therefore, have a fluid opinion regarding property rights. This bad relationship Africans have with property rights for common people stunts investment. Why invest in Burkina Faso if, in a few years, they’re going to NATIONALIZE my investments?
I laugh when people say BRICS is a threat; almost all BRICS nations have sketchy track records on property rights; it’s not that people want to use the USD; it’s that the US dollar has one of the world’s best track records respecting property rights. That took over 100 years to build and Burkina Faso in 2024 is basically a new nation led by what appears to be an emerging dictator.