The country remains too dependent on the vagaries of the commodity market.

Abidjan

Has Côte d'Ivoire experienced a second "Ivorian miracle"? This is what Alassane Ouattara's supporters like to make heard. In its latest analysis note published in 2019, the US rating agency Moody's recalled that with its growth rate flirting with 8% over the last ten years (11% at its best), the country had surpassed the IMF's predictions and in a short time regained performance similar to that of the decades 1970 to 1990.

Among the leading countries on the continent, alongside Rwanda and Ethiopia, Côte d'Ivoire, once again "the locomotive of West Africa", has low inflation: well below the critical 3% required by the West African Economic and Monetary Union. Yamoussoukro is ranked among the "fastest growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa" by the World Bank, with a GDP that the Ivorian government says more than doubled from €21.5 billion in 2010 to €49.7 billion last year. Added to this is a dazzling development of telecommunications, energy, construction and a construction boom, drained by projects focused in particular on business tourism (7% of GDP)...

"No more purchasing power than ten years ago"

For observers, these mirobolous figures hide a less glowing reality. "The economic record of Alassane Ouattara is very mixed," notes Séraphin Yao Prao, professor of economics at the University of Bouaké. If the poverty rate fell from 55.4% in 2011, to 39.5% in 2018, according to the survey conducted by the World Bank and the Ivorian National Institute of Statistics, behind the scenes, the experts who worked on this report evoke "a battle of numbers and many disagreements on the method of calculation". The measures taken by the executive have indeed improved the overall economic health of the country, but they have contributed only very little to improving the quality of life of the most vulnerable households and have brought only limited benefits to the middle class.

"Our family life has not changed, we do not have more purchasing power than ten years ago," notes Florence, a law student. "At the macroeconomic level, the country has green indicators, private investment has increased from 6.3% in 2011 to 14.3% in 2017, public investment, from 2.6% to 6.8%, so there has been a real qualitative leap, but this growth has major shortcomings: little job creation, an unemployment rate still very high (23-26%, Editor's note) especially for the educated, a Minimum Wage (60,000 CFA, Editor's note) still too low compared to daily expenses, "warns Séraphin Yao Prao. The informal economy accounts for 93% of employment. One of the economic drivers remains the agricultural sector, with palm oil, cashew nuts, rubber nuts but especially cocoa, which supports a fifth of the population and contributes 15% to GDP. But the country has not completed its transition to more local processing and remains too dependent on the vagaries of the commodity market.

Another shadow in the picture is that education and health are lagging far behind. Literacy is on the rise, health spending has increased slightly, but hospitals are still referred to as "death chambers" by the population. During its pre-campaign, the government launched a social plan of more than a billion euros over two years to try to reduce poverty. "Too late", for those who feel cheated. Best illustration: the Human Development Index is still only 165th out of 189.