Burkina Faso’s two most powerful businessmen are in a legal dispute over the 170-station fuel network that TotalEnergies left behind when it exited the country. Mahamadou Bonkoungou, founder of the EBOMAF construction group and widely regarded as Burkina Faso’s richest man, has initiated an arbitration procedure against SPI, a Burkinabè real estate company that owns the properties on which several of the former TotalEnergies stations sit, in a direct challenge to Idrissa Nassa’s Coris Invest Group, which acquired the network and rebranded it as Barka Energies in December 2025.
The dispute centres on an asset that is strategically irreplaceable in Burkina Faso’s current operating environment. The former TotalEnergies Marketing Burkina network, built over more than two decades, comprises approximately 170 fuel stations, supply depots, and a distribution infrastructure that anchors a significant portion of the country’s petroleum supply chain. No comparable alternative network exists.
How the acquisition unfolded
TotalEnergies announced the sale of its Burkina Faso downstream assets in February 2025, part of a wider withdrawal from the Sahel. The company had exited Mali weeks earlier, selling to Coly Energy Mali. In Burkina Faso, the buyer was Coris Invest Group, the investment vehicle of Idrissa Nassa. On September 8, 2025, Nassa personally signed the acquisition in Dakar. The deal was announced to Burkinabè authorities by Badara Mbacké, TotalEnergies’ Head of Commercial Development for West Africa, at a meeting with the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Crafts. In December 2025, the rebranded company, Barka Energies, was launched publicly in Ouagadougou with new signage replacing TotalEnergies branding at stations across major cities.
The two men and what they have built
Bonkoungou, 58, entered business through trading and gold dealing before founding Entreprise Bonkoungou Mahamadou et Fils, now known simply as EBOMAF, in 1989. The group has accumulated more than $3 billion in road and infrastructure contracts across Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Togo, and Ivory Coast. Bonkoungou has since diversified into banking through IB Bank and IB Holding, aviation through Liz Aviation and the private jet charter firm Liza Transport, machinery distribution through Bonkoungou Distribution, and healthcare with the Princess Sarah Clinic in Ouagadougou. For a conglomerate built on construction, heavy equipment, and transport logistics, where petroleum supply intersects with nearly every operation, control of a national fuel distribution network is a natural next step.
Nassa founded Coris Bank International in 2008 with $3 million in capital. It has since grown into a regional powerhouse managing approximately $9 billion in assets across all eight West African Economic and Monetary Union countries, plus Guinea, Chad, and Cabo Verde. In 2025 he was named CEO of the Year at the Africa CEO Forum. Beyond banking, Nassa has expanded into mining through Nioko Resources, which holds a majority stake in Hummingbird Resources and controls gold mines in Mali and Guinea, and through a $47 million stake in Orezone Gold’s Bomboré project in Burkina Faso. The TotalEnergies acquisition was his deliberate entry into the energy sector, executed through Coris Invest Group and framed publicly as part of a push toward economic sovereignty.
Why it matters beyond the two men
The acquisition of TotalEnergies’ Burkina Faso assets was widely presented as a sovereignty milestone: local ownership replacing a French multinational in a sector central to everyday economic life. The junta government of Captain Ibrahim Traoré has made the repatriation of strategic assets from French companies a political priority. The Barka Energies rebrand and its stated ambition to become Burkina Faso’s premier national hydrocarbon distribution network fit that narrative precisely.
The Bonkoungou challenge complicates that story. A dispute between two of the country’s wealthiest private citizens over the control mechanism of a newly localised asset raises questions about the governance architecture behind the sovereignty narrative. In Mali, where TotalEnergies also exited, assets passed to a state-linked operator rather than being contested between private interests. The Burkina Faso path has produced a different outcome.
Fuel supply in Burkina Faso operates under conditions that make any disruption to the distribution network a direct security risk. The country is landlocked, facing active insurgencies in multiple regions, and dependent on supply chains that run through insecure territory. Control of the fuel network is not merely a commercial question. Any prolonged legal uncertainty over its ownership structure has operational implications that extend well beyond the balance sheets of either man.
Bigger Picture: When French multinationals exit the Sahel, they do not leave a vacuum. They leave assets, and the question of who captures those assets and under what terms defines the real content of whatever sovereignty narrative accompanies the exit. TotalEnergies’ withdrawal from Burkina Faso was presented as a clean transfer to local hands. What has emerged instead is a contest between two private empires, each with the capital, legal resources, and political relationships to sustain a prolonged dispute. For investors watching Africa’s energy transition, the Barka Energies situation is a case study in the gap between the sovereignty narrative and the institutional architecture required to make localisation work. The narrative frames local ownership as a public good. The arbitration initiated by Bonkoungou frames it as a commercial contest. Both are true simultaneously. Whichever man ultimately controls Barka Energies, Burkina Faso’s fuel network needs a stable operator. In a country managing an active insurgency, an energy supply chain is not an asset that can absorb extended boardroom warfare.
Source: Billionaires.Africa / Africa Briefing / APA News
