After almost six months, the saga of the Ivorian ill-fated election is finally over. Yesterday, April 11, Laurent Gbagbo was arrested and his decade-long reign is over. There is disagreement as to whether he was arrested by the forces supporting Ouattara or by French forces. The French, the UN and Ouattara deny it, the Gbagbo camp asserts it. In either case, there is no doubt that without French intervention, this phase of the conflict would not have come to an end so soon.
Some Background to the Ivorian Crisis
As the standoff continues in the Côte d’Ivoire, I thought it’d be good to provide a little background. After all, there’s more to the story than a sore loser–Gbagbo–not wanting to give up his job as president. To get a little deeper, we have to look at how Côte d’Ivoire became the world’s largest cocoa producer.
Ivorian planters were initially slow to embrace cocoa and coffee as export crops, but once they did, they quickly ran up against the power of French planters who severely limited access to labor and other inputs. In response, the Ivorian planters formed the Syndicat Africain Agricole (SAA) in 1944. The SAA was more than an interest group. It was the training ground for a new nationalist planter class. The SAA also formed the basis for the Parti Democratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI). Its leader, Houphouet-Boigny, ruled the country from 1960 until 1993.
Côte d’Ivoire Tragedy Continues
First, my apologies for the long silence of this blog. I’ve had a really busy time and blog updates have taken a back seat. But I had to add a post, now that the presidential election in the Côte d’Ivoire has deteriorated into chaos. A quick summary: after five years of delays, the presidential election finally took place on October 31. Initial reports were encouraging, there was little violence and the election seemed to proceed properly. The results let to a runoff election between the two top vote-getters: sitting President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara. The runoff election took place on November 28 and on December 2, the Ivorian Electoral Commission announced that Alassane Ouattare had won the election with 54 percent of the vote.
October is Fairtrade Month
Ok, folks. I’m a bit late with that information but here are some resources to help you buy more fairtrade products.
Think there’s only fairtrade coffee and chocolate? Think again. Here’s a list of products available with fairtrade certification. Keep an eye out for them at your favorite store.
Uganda Aims to Expand Cocoa Production
More and more countries situated in the magic band of 20 degrees north and south of the equator are giving cocoa another look. The high prices of the moment are probably an important factor.
Uganda is not a name usually associated with cocoa. But the country has been busy expanding its cocoa acreage over the past eight years. According to Bloomberg, the state-run Cocoa Development Project expects next year’s harvest to increase by 13 percent. The expansion of cocoa is an attempt to diversify its agricultural exports that currently depend mostly on coffee and tea. These commodities contribute 22% to the GDP.
The total is still a miniscule 17,000 tons. But the trend is upward and the country expects to reach 50,000 tons by 2015/16. By comparison, the Côte d’Ivoire exported 1.2 million tons last season.
