According to our information, the Ivorian authorities rejected, on October 15, the counter-offer submitted by the French, in April, on the airport extension project, in favor of Crig, the subsidiary of China Railway.

The Ivorian authorities have finally decided on Tuesday, October 15. As Jeune Afrique Business+ has learned, it is ultimately Crig (China Railway International Group), a subsidiary of the China Railway conglomerate, which will build the extension of Félix-Houphouët-Boigny airport in Abidjan from 2020, which is supposed to carry its capacity to 5 million passengers by 2022, thus winning the battle between it and Bouygues. Traffic at Abidjan airport is expected to reach the 1.5 million passenger mark this year.

In August 2018, on the sidelines of the China-Africa Summit (Focac), President Alassane Ouattara signed a memorandum of understanding with Zhang Zongyan, president of China Railway, awarding them the project. In Beijing, the Ivorian delegation accompanying the Head of State was impressed by the visit to the construction site of the new pharaonic airport of Daxing, the largest in the world, inaugurated on September 24 and intended to accommodate 100 million passengers. But, in April, the French construction group Bouygues, through its subsidiary Setao, managed locally by Nicolas de Roquefeuil, submitted a counter-offer, as we revealed on May 9.