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Ivory Coast will vote on Saturday to elect a new president or renew Alassane Ouattara in power for ten years. Its economic record is quite good, but not for all Ivorians.
On the plus side, the Ivorian economy is undergoing a rebirth. With an average growth of 7% to 8% since 2011 – and without taking into account the current year marred by the pandemic – the West African elephant rejoices: supported by the return of international and public investment aid, it has regained its driving role in the sub-region thanks to its agricultural exports; it is the world’s largest producer of cocoa and cashews. Its GDP, $ 58 billion. In 2019, has doubled in ten years. In terms of population, national prosperity is higher than in neighboring Ghana or Nigeria. Public accounts are kept, the deficit and debt were under control before the pandemic.
And the Ivorians’ daily lives have improved
70% now have access to water and electricity, they can benefit from universal health insurance that has been implemented for a year. These ultra-rapid advances make people dream of a “return to the good old days,” according to economist Denis Cogneau, president of Houphouët-Boigny. But far too many Ivorians are excluded from this little miracle: according to the World Bank, almost one in two people live below the poverty line with less than 737 FCFA a day or 1.10 euros.
It is a failure of the Ouattara presidency?
Not quite. On the contrary, the study conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and the World Bank concludes that there was a net decrease in poverty between 2012 and 2018 relatively speaking. This is also the conclusion of economist Denis Cogneau, who conducted a survey of Ivorian household income in the period 2010 and 2014. But in absolute terms, the demographic increase is wiping out this progress. As the population has grown strongly over the last decade, the number of poor has increased from 10 million to 11 million people. If too few Ivorians benefit from waste from growth, it’s also because income inequality remains very high: 1% of the population receives 17% of national income – in France it is about half. less – based on 2014 figures provided by the World Inequality Database. The tax yield is still very low, it stagnates at 18% of GDP. In advanced OECD countries, it is twice as much. This therefore limits redistribution policies.
Despite record growth, Côte d’Ivoire has not failed to rise to the status of new countries either.
Difficult to detect the driving activity that allows the economy to start, according to Denis Cogneau, who has examined the accounts carefully. One year drives telecommunications growth, another the generous cocoa prices, sometimes household consumption or investment. Ivory Coast is focusing on its agricultural specialization. Growth was primarily driven by extensive agricultural practices by clearing land, developing cashews in the northern country, and increasing cocoa production. Today it exceeds two million tons compared to 1.5 million ten years ago. A model that is not sustainable, warns Denis Cogneau, “because the expansion of cultivated land cannot continue indefinitely. Without a marked increase in productivity, this extravagant growth will eventually dry up. ”
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