- Title: IVORY COAST/FILE: Post-war Ivory Coast nurtures second 'miracle'
- Date: 21st May 2012
- Summary: ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST (FILE MARCH 2011) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TROOPS OF LAURENT GBAGBO AND ALASSANE OUATTARA IN ABIDJAN, TROOPS WITH BAZOOKAS
- Embargoed: 5th June 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Cote d'Ivoire
- Country: Ivory Coast
- Topics: Conflict,Economic News,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA9YNZ15E18B0PRGK7PJQWF8TTC
- Story Text: It's a beautiful sight, and not one that can easily be found elsewhere in West Africa. With its mirror-windowed skyscrapers, the Abidjan's Plateau financial district is now showing few signs of the battles waged there. Ivory Coast's economic capital is once again flourishing.
"A year after President Ouattara came into power; the face of Abidjan has changed. Abidjan, who was dubbed first the 'pearl of the lagoon', then the 'pearl of good health,' is incontestably getting a new face," said Amadou Maiga, a lawyer from Abidjan.
Little over a year ago such optimism was scarce. Mortar bombs were pouring down in Abidjan as the West African country slipped into a civil war that claimed over 3,000 lives and forced thousands more to flee their homes.
Now, helped by billions of dollars of donor cash, President Alassane Ouattara wants to shore up the peace with a dash for economic growth like the "Ivorian miracle" which turned the country into a regional powerhouse after independence in the 1960s.
And some things are hard to miss. The foundations of a $290-million toll bridge, long a symbol of the country's arrested development in a decade of political crisis, slowly rise up from the shore of the lagoon. After the long suffering during the war, this fills some locals with optimism.
"Clearly we won't be able to do everything immediately, because certain measures, certain deep measures will take time to have an impact on people's lives, but incontestably we realise that something has changed," Maiga said.
Internationally recognised as winner of a presidential election in December 2010, Ouattara had to wait over four months to enter office as incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down, pushing the country towards self-destruction.
Old ethnic wounds were opened in the violence that brought the economy of the world's top cocoa-grower to a halt. Ouattara spent much of the conflict in an Abidjan hotel besieged by pro-Gbagbo forces before his northern allies, backed by French troops, ejected Gbagbo from his palace.
A year on, things are different. Each day a new strip of pot-holed road is patched up.
As early as his inauguration speech made a year ago on Monday, Ouattara had signalled his goal of emulating Ivory Coast's three-decade rise that ushered in a golden age of prosperity and stability unrivalled before or since in West Africa.
But analysts say the challenges lying ahead are equally great.
"Now the Ivorian people need to see their demands satisfied. The fundamental question is the question of employment, which remains one of the essential problems that this government needs to face," said economic analyst Maurice Faye.
Ouattara, a 70-year-old former top International Monetary Fund official, appears determined to make up for lost time.
For Houphouet-Boigny, the recipe for peace was simple: heavy economic investment and close ties with international partners.
While Ouattara is in his element tinkering under the bonnet of the economy, his efforts to foster a wider reconciliation in a country of 20 million split in two for over a decade remain constrained by former foes and supposed allies alike.
Even though Gbagbo lost to Ouattara, the U.N.- certified results showed he won nearly 46 percent of the vote - evidence of strong support for him and his Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) in the wealthier south of the country.
While some FPI conditions for re-entering politics - such as a demand that Gbagbo be freed - are unrealistic, their charge that post-war justice has been partial is seen by many as valid.
Nowhere is that truer than in Duekoue, a mainly pro-Gbagbo town in the cocoa-producing west where around 800 civilians were killed as pro-Ouattara northern rebel soldiers swept south in late March 2011 on their way to a final assault on Abidjan.
During a visit to Duekoue town last month, Ouattara repeated his promises that all crimes would be punished.
"Yes, all killers will be punished. They will be brought to justice. No-one will be spared," he told an audience of But there still has not been a single arrest of a pro-Ouattara soldier.
While the violence of pro-Gbagbo fighters may overall have exceeded that committed by pro-Ouattara forces, critics argue the lack of full justice suggests Ouattara is beholden to the fellow northerners whose armed support he needed to win power.
Visits like these at grave sites or sites of massacres are hoped to help the reconciliation, but many, like Francoise Douhou Bah, are still left carrying the burden of the acts of war passed with very little help.
She's slowly trying to rebuild what is left over from her hotel after extensive pillaging, attacks left it barren of everything inside. Even her nephew was killed during the fighting. It will take more than words to persuade her.
"He (Ouattara) said that justice will be done. I hope so, I hope so, I hope justice will be done. We, us the victims, we've been forgotten. Us the victims we are forgotten. Nobody came to our help. So how are we to do it?," Bah said.
And the challenges don't stop there. Ivory Coast's rich agricultural sector became a magnet for migrant labour from around West Africa and expatriate workers from Europe and Lebanon flocked to take a share of the riches.
A reform of the cocoa sector - while yet to fully convince the food multinationals involved - aims to boost farmers' incomes and reverse a trend that saw the rural poverty rate jump from 15 to 62 percent between 1985-2008 despite a doubling of production during the same period.
Cocoa farmers like Issa Djeka Ouattara say they prefer selling their cocoa in Ivory Coast, to help the government and the country develop, rather than send it directly to export regionally. But he says farmers like him need help.
"This year they give us 1,100 Francs (2.2 USD) but it's not been consistent. Today they take our cocoa, yesterday I sold at 550 (1 USD) so really the prices are not respected because there's no monitoring. If the government wants to, and can monitor, I think if prices are respected, it will be ok," Djeka Ouattara said.
While security in most of the country has vastly improved, the west is still plagued by violence and awash with arms. Yet the army and police force, far from acting as guarantors of stability, constitute a serious danger in their own right.
Deep distrust exists between rank-and-file police agents, many of whom fought for Gbagbo, and their new, often northern, bosses. Security commanders are often loath to issue arms to their subordinates, creating a crippling dysfunction.
A similar split afflicts the military.
But there are also reasons for optimism. Regional neighbours such as Liberia and Sierra Leone have in the past two decades suffered more devastating conflicts and - so far - held the peace and made economic progress. Post-genocide Rwanda has also achieved a degree of stability through development.
An IMF-backed deal on debt relief, in the works for years but never finalised as Gbagbo dragged his heels on reforms, is expected in June. This could bring foreign debt down from around 50 percent of GDP to a more manageable 40 percent.
It is hard to argue with the results. The IMF sees growth of around eight percent this year, easily wiping out last year's contraction of 4.7 percent. Analysts expect the rate to steady to a still healthy six percent next year and pursue that trend for the foreseeable future.
How long it will take before Ivory Coast can start to realise such potential is unknown. By laying the foundations for a stronger economy, Ouattara is buying himself time for the longer-term task of healing the wounds of the past and knitting Ivorian society back into a peaceful whole.
"For people to really notice that things changed, we need to see the question of employment resolved. But I will admit that certain important projects have been started, showing that progressively maybe we can get back on our feet," Faye said.
Good shots of industry and activity in the Ivory Coast. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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