2011

Strengthening the Group’s presence in Africa in the mining and energy sectors, with operations in Burkina Faso, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mauritania.

In Burkina Faso, CIS is making its debut with a subsidiary of the mining exploration company Avocet Mining, on the Inata project, a gold mine in the north of the country. The site is around 400 km from the capital, which means six hours of 4×4 driving on roads that aren’t roads at all. A place in the middle of nowhere, poorly served, where the only solution is to transport goods via neighboring Ghana.

With the help of a number of local farmers, CIS set up a cooperative to supply the base and overcome supply problems.

Since then, CIS’s Burkinabe subsidiary has been involved in numerous initiatives to improve the daily lives of children and families in communities close to its operations. In particular, CIS has been involved in the construction of an orphanage for children from working-class districts of Ouagadougou.

In the same year, CIS began operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo on offshore platforms for the Perenco Group. Once the site was up and running, the platforms received containers from Europe every three or four months, filled with all kinds of essential goods, from foodstuffs to soap and cutlery.

In Mauritania, CIS has won an international tender launched by the Canadian company Kinross, for the Tasiast mine. Located in the Inchiri region of Mauritania, 300 kilometers northeast of Nouakchott, Tasiast is one of the world’s largest gold deposits.