According to an investigation by AP, sex trafficking is widespread in Burkina Faso. Those with knowledge of the trafficking say most of the women come from Nigeria’s Edo state, where promises of jobs in shops or salons in Burkina Faso seem like a good way to support their families. Once in Burkina Faso, they are sent to work off debts in squalid conditions of forced prostitution at or near small-scale gold mines. One man arrested and detained by local authorities for trying to traffic three women across the Burkina Faso border into neighbouring Mali told the AP he didn’t consider it Human Trafficking because he said the women knew they’d be working as prostitutes. He told the AP that he had bought the women for US$270 each in Benin and was planning to sell them for more than twice that to a Nigerian madam in Mali. Experts and local officials say most documented Human Trafficking cases of women appear at small-scale gold mines rather than the larger industrial mines. Nonetheless, in one now-vibrant mining community, the southwestern town of Hounde, the opening of an industrial gold mine in 2017 led to a six-fold increase in brothels.