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President Alassane Ouattara of Côte d'Ivoire
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At 3 a.m. on a Sunday
last month Charles Kakou was awoken by the trill of whistles he had helped
distribute to warn that bulldozers had arrived to demolish his seafront
community in Côte
d'Ivoire's commercial capital Abidjan. Police
moved in with tear gas, arresting anyone who resisted. By the afternoon, Kakou
and his neighbours were homeless and the last vestiges of what was once a 9
km-long (6 mile) coastal shantytown had been reduced to rubble.
"We've
been here for 40 years. All our children were born here," he said,
standing amid a vast expanse of sand and broken concrete adjacent to a highway,
whose refurbishment authorities used to justify the eviction of tens of
thousands of residents.
In
the five years since President Alassane Ouattara was elected, Côte d'Ivoire has
emerged from a decade-long political crisis and a 2011 civil war to become
Africa's rising star.
Reuters report continues:
As
other economies on the continent have crumbled amid a global commodities crash
that has sparked capital flight and tanked currencies, Côte d'Ivoire has posted
GDP growth of around 9 percent over the past three years, according to the
government.
Ouattara
is expected to ride the economic boom to a comfortable election victory in a
poll on Sunday. An influx of foreign investment is visible in the vast
supermarkets and chic hotels sprouting up to cater to businessmen and the
well-to-do.
But
many in the West African nation complain they have been left behind and the
president's critics warn that economic exclusion is undermining efforts to
close the book on the years of unrest.
"There's
been an economic aspect to this crisis," said Pascal Affi N'Guessan,
Ouattara's main challenger, who argued that economic growth that is not
inclusive does little to ensure future peace.
"We
must create jobs, fight against the high cost of living and poverty," he
told Reuters. "It's because the nation is poor by-and-large that so many
young people were involved in the destabilization of their own country."
Ouattara,
a former senior International Monetary Fund official, has sunk billions of
dollars into rehabilitating large-scale infrastructure like road and rail links
left neglected during a decade of turmoil.
The
president says the approach, often deployed in post-conflict countries, is a
necessity if Ivory Coast is to attract investors who will revitalize the
private sector, allowing wealth to trickle down.
But
Joel Atsain, a 31-year-old electrician from Abidjan's working class Yopougon
district, is not convinced.
"Roads?
Can we eat roads?" he asked rhetorically as he watched a group of
mechanics throw dice across a Ludo board to kill time.
CAN'T EAT ROADS
One
of the dice players, Patrick Gogoua, 35, said that he and his friends were
constantly broke and that business was better before Ouattara's election.
"Sometimes
we split a cigarette between three of us," he said. "We're tradesmen.
But there's no improvement in the work. We have to wait for customers, but then
when they come they give 1,000 or 2,000 francs. I have two kids at home."
Ouattara
rejects criticism that he has not done enough to battle unemployment and
improve the standard of living for average Ivorians. He claims two million jobs
have been created on his watch and agriculture sector incomes have increased 20
percent. Per capita GDP is also climbing.
The
price per kg earned by Côte d'Ivoire's roughly 800,000 cocoa farmers has
increased by nearly 40 percent since the government introduced sweeping reforms
of the sector in 2012.
Ouattara's
administration also recently created a new youth employment office that has
financial support from the World Bank.
"Once
you get more jobs in the cities and with the youth, then you have a faster
perception that everyone is sharing equitably," he told Reuters in an
interview this week.
"We
have the policies now, we have the programmes, we have the financing. It's the
implementation we really have to concentrate on."
If
he wins re-election this weekend, as expected, Ouattara will have to move
quickly.
While
a June opinion poll by the Washington-based International Republican Institute
found that two-thirds of Ivorians thought the country was heading in the right
direction, just 31 percent believed the economy improved in the past year.
Highlighting
people's expectations, nearly two-thirds expect their personal economic situation
to improve in the coming year, the survey said.
Charles
Kakou, like most from the demolished beachside slum, sleeps in the cramped home
of a friend on the other side of the immaculate new highway.
He
said all of his former neighbours backed Côte d'Ivoire's economic development
but said few were likely to turn up to cast their ballots on Sunday.
"How can we be
motivated to vote if we don't even have a roof?" he said. "They're
out on the street. How do you want them to go vote?"
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