Word: houphouet
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Many of the 5,000,000 citizens of the Ivory Coast are devout animists who revere the crocodile as a sacred beast. So President Félix Houphouet-Boigny, himself a Roman Catholic, does little to quash the widespread belief that he keeps the palace pond well stocked with the respected reptiles and consults them regularly...
Western businessmen may laugh, but such crocodilian cunning has allowed Houphouet to weld 60 backward tribes into one of Black Africa's most prosperous countries-and its most striking anomaly. Tanzania, Guinea and other young nations are nationalizing foreign holdings, restricting foreign investment and turning to socialism for solutions to their development problems. Houphouet has entrusted the development of the Ivory Coast's economy to Western capitalists, most of them French. While some of his neighbors expelled their former colonial masters, Houphouet, 66, a onetime member of Charles de Gaulle's cabinet, retained them as honored guests...
...Coffee. Because it welcomes foreign capital, the Ivory Coast maintains an annual economic growth rate of 11%, the highest in Black Africa. Farm production has increased 8% in each of the past four years, making Houphouet's bustling republic the world's third largest producer of coffee and Africa's largest exporter of timber. Industrial investment is rising by 20% a year. Firms of the caliber of Renault, Esso and Union Carbide are pouring into the country to take advantage of liberal tax holidays and virtually unlimited repatriation of profits. Per capita income is expected to reach...
Black Riviera. If a wise crocodile once whispered to Houphouet that the secret of prosperity is to encourage foreign investment, the sage should have specified that the price was foreign domination. Four-fifths of the country's 360 major businesses are French-owned: only two are entirely controlled by Ivorians. In addition, four-fifths of the top-and middle-level jobs are held by foreigners, mostly French. The government is permeated with French technical advisers. Many of them are left over from colonial days, and some are suspected of helping French firms win trade contracts. Political opposition to Houphouet...
...Uganda-have been moderately successful. But the African Development Bank, created to finance regional cooperation schemes, has little money to lend because only nine African states have paid up their allotted subscriptions. "What are we supposed to share?" asks the Ivory Coast's President, Félix Houphouet-Boigny. "Each other's poverty...