Poverty & struggle in Ivory Coast

On Oct. 20, cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast suspended the strike they began Oct. 16. The minister of agriculture has agreed to talk with them and they hope that the president of the Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, who is a cocoa producer, will enter into the talks.

The farmers are demanding a 50 percent increase in the price they get paid at the field edge and a large payment to their cooperatives. The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest producer of cocoa, an essential ingredient in the production of chocolate. The capitalist market worldwide has controls on the production of cocoa resulting in growing poverty for these farmers.

Their strike was massive—organizers claimed that over 15,000 farmers took part in it—and they were able to physically block all shipments of cocoa to the ports.

While the farmers have suspended their strike until Oct. 24, the Autonomous Union of the Sons and Daughters of Cocoa & Coffee Producers decided to blockade schools in cocoa-areas Oct. 23, which is the day schools begin the new semester in the Ivory Coast. These youth can’t go to school because their families don’t make enough money to pay the fees.

Earlier in October, bank and financial workers held a three-day strike to demand more pay.

In 1999, 28 percent of Ivoirians lived below the poverty level and now the figure is 44 percent, according to U.N. statistics, and is increasing. The Ivory Coast ranks 163 out of the 177 countries in the U.N.’s human development index. More and more Ivoirians are having trouble finding enough food.

This extreme poverty, in a country which was one of the best-off countries in West Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, has forced many people to live near or on garbage dumps in Abidjan, the capital and major city, because they are forced to survive by picking through trash for salable items.

When an Ivoirian company dumped 5,000 tons of toxic chemicals from Western Europe in the landfills and sewerage system of Abidjan at the end of August, their effects were massive and deadly. According to a recent report by the minister of Health and Public Hygiene, 10 people died, 69 were hospitalized and over 102,000 people got a checkup because of the fumes from the chemicals.

The reaction of the poorest workers of Abidjan was widespread, militant and strenuous in the form of diverse demonstrations and protests. A government minister was physically attacked on an inspection tour of the contaminated area. The government had to be reshuffled, resulting in a French firm specializing in removing toxic waste being hired by the middle of September.

According to Safiatou Ba N’Daw, head of the government office concerned with removing toxic waste, the French firm has removed over 4,000 tons of waste and the Ivorian government has spent nearly $1 million on medicines to relieve the effects of the fumes.

A major cause of the increasing misery of the Ivory Coast is French control of its economy and politics. France began colonizing the Ivory Coast in the 1840s. After the Ivory Coast’s formal independence in 1960, there were considerably more French citizens living and earning a living in the country than before independence—50,000 compared to 10,000.

In 2002, after a failed coup attempt, a rebellion broke out in the north and France, with U.S. support, got a resolution passed in the United Nations permitting it to send “peacekeepers” to the Ivory Coast, under the oversight of the African Union. Most of the French citizens left in 2002. This development, along with the country being split in half and the suffering of its internal trade from severe disruption, were major blows to the already fragile economy.

The French had hoped to dislodge Laurent Gbagbo, who remains the president. Their mandate is up at the end of October, which is why all this political maneuvering in international venues has broken out. But the Ivoirian people are not asking for foreign intervention. They are struggling for their demands today.

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