Fighting Poverty

Sébastien Dano Djédjé, minister for relations with parliament and the institutions in Ivory Coast, tells of his country's plans for victory.

Poverty is defined as the lack or shortage of material, monetary, social, cultural, and psychological conditions for the life of an individual or group of individuals. As such, poverty looms large in the economic and social development of Côte d'Ivoire.

Since its appearance at the end of the 1970s, poverty has reached worrying proportions. The level of poverty has risen from 10 per cent in 1985 to 36.8 per cent in 1995. Thus, the proportion of poor people has tripled in the space of one decade.

This poverty is both material and psychological. The possession of goods, the ability to look after oneself, to bring up one's children, to eat decently are no longer enough to define well-being. For many Ivorian families uncertainty, vulnerability and a sense of impotence are bound up with the state of poverty.

Poverty which was a phenomenon of the countryside spread in the 1970 to the towns and cities. The social categories most exposed are illiterate adults, women and young people. The spreading of poverty has come about rapidly.

In the face of this phenomenon of poverty, which accentuated the marginalisation and exclusion of a broad stratum of the population, government moved slowly.

A national plan to combat poverty was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 June 1997 and the measures taken to insure economic competitiveness so as to reduce poverty have had meagre results. The events of 24 December 1999 and the transition to military control put an end to budget expenditure, reducing economic growth from 6 per cent in 1998 to minus 2 per cent in 2000. But poverty is not inevitable. That is why social policy and the fight against poverty in Côte d'Ivoire aim to reduce in the medium term the present poverty index from 33.6 per cent in 1998 to less than 30 per cent in 2005.

There are three essential causes of poverty in Côte d'Ivoire. The first is rooted in the export trade in agricultural raw materials, principally coffee and cocoa, the fall in whose prices, together with the big fluctuations in the value of the US dollar put a brutal end to the Ivorian Miracle of the beginning of the 1980s. The second, the debt crisis which has forced government to submit to the Structural Adjustment Programmes, SAPs, of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is still putting a brake on the country's development. Among the conditions for development aid was a reduction in the staffing of public sector enterprises, their privatisation and the reduction of civil servants' wages. Consequently, unemployment has risen notably, particularly in the mid-1980s.

In 1986 foreign businesses disinvested, raising unemployment. Poverty developed, affecting 11 per cent of the population. The austerity of the measures brought on by the PAS brought real poverty to the towns.

Debt servicing too meant that the social expenditure of the state was cut. More than half Côte d'Ivoire's export income goes on foreign debt servicing to the detriment of the building of health centres, schools and universities.

The third cause, linked to the oil shocks of 1976-79 sounded the tocsin for the Ivorian Miracle. The collapse of raw material prices because of the depreciation of the US dollar after the oil shock of 1976, the rise in transport costs and the rise in price of industrial goods has contributed to the deterioration of the terms of trade. Local causes have made the rate of development extremely slow.

Poverty made its appearance in Côte d'Ivoire at the end of the 1970s. The population of four million had tripled by 1990 because of natural increase and large immigrant flows. Today’s rate of population increase, at 23.8 per cent, is one of the highest in the world. It is projected that the population will rise to 20 million by 2005 and 27.5 million by 2015.

This has brought about a growth of cities and an uneven population density within the country. The South and the forested regions of the West are subject to great population pressures. In the South in Abidjan, we have 292 inhabitants per square kilometre against 8 at Odienné in the North-West and 6 at Bouma in the North-East. Abidjan has gone from 65,000 people in 1998 to 2.5 million.

Economic growth has had mixed fortunes. Between 1966 and 1974 it was on average 9.4 per cent, then fell to minus 7 per cent from 1986 to 1990 while recovering to minus 0.2 per cent between 1991 and 1993. After the devaluation of the CFA franc it climbed to an average of 7 per cent from 1994 to 1998. In 2000 the rate of growth fell again to minus 2 per cent.

Despite the economic miracle of the 1970s, the population of Côte d'Ivoire has got to know many forms of poverty. Economic growth has had a negligible effect on the level of Sustained Human Development. The country lags in this regard. The 2000 World Development Report puts it in 154th position among 174 countries, thus one of those with the lowest level of Sustained Human Development. Despite a gross domestic product of $1,598 per head of purchasing power Côte d'Ivoire is far behind Cameroun in 134th place or Togo in 145th place despite the fact that their per caput purchasing power is lower.

This reflects once again the inequality in the distribution of the fruits of economic growth.

The present level of poverty which affects 36.8 per cent of the population is the result of past disparities, among economic groups, between the sexes and among regions. It is true many investments were made. But the massive recourse to foreign finance to cost these and the absence of any diversification of the productive process have weakened the bases of the Ivorian economy. What is more the concentration of economic development in the south of the country has resulted in a pressure on the urban infrastructure which, together with a slowing of public investment has brought poverty to town-dwellers. Studies and investigation of poverty in Côte d'Ivoire concentrate mainly on levels of consumption. If there does not exist a legal definition of poverty the manifestations of it are daily visible to decision makers. The purchase of food absorbs more than half of household expenditure. Between 20 and 40 per cent of the population cannot satisfy their daily food needs.

Between 1985 and 1994 malnutrition has greatly increased. The percentage of children between 24 and 35 months who are small for their age has gone up by two-thirds.

Shortage of food is widespread in the towns and countryside alike. Health, education, housing, access to water are important indicators of social wellbeing and the ability to escape from poverty. But there is also widespread infant and maternal mortality. Life expectancy has fallen from 54 years in 1995 to 46.9 years in 1998. With 10 per cent of its population HIV positive Côte d'Ivoire is the West African country which has the highest incidence of AIDS with 50,000 deaths registered by the World Health Organisation and 600,000 children left orphans by the disease. Such figures show that the advances of the previous 20 years are being wiped out by AIDS. HIV/AIDS is the principal cause of adult mortality, more important than malaria or traffic accidents.

Ivorians do not consider poverty in uniquely economic terms and the fight against poverty must include the psychological dimension. For many citizens poverty means a loss of dignity. The fact of living on the margins of society in unhealthy and dangerous slums reinforces those people's feeling of being second-class citizens. Unemployment and lack of access to the land brings on anti-social behaviour.

Without entering into detail, we must sketch out the main strategies against poverty. It is a menace at the beginning of the third millennium to human progress and democracy in our countries in the context of the thoroughgoing reform of the state.

Efficient measures must therefore be taken on the questions of schooling to give every young Ivorian a chance of education. There must, too, be a universal health service and a housing plan to allow all Ivorians to live decently. There must be thoroughgoing reform of the education system with free education from kindergarten; literacy as an aid to democratising the schools for the benefit of the greatest number; greater efficiency within schools; free education from 2001/2002 and greater and more efficient regionalisation.

In the realm of health more people must be given access to health care with better organisation and an accent put on preventive medicine; the rehabilitation of traditional medicine; greater research and the encouragement of the pharmaceutical industry and health insurance within the context of universal social security. HIV/AIDS must be prevented and treated at the primary and secondary level with free anti-retroviral medicines provided for sufferers through a specialised ministerial office. Unemployment must be tackled by developing crafts, aiding the unemployed, promoting individual enterprise by supporting small scheme and investigating ways to foster the secondary and tertiary sector.

Similar measures must be undertaken on the housing front, promoting housing for all, urban planning, electrification and water supply. Since March, Côte d'Ivoire has been eligible for aid under the Very Indebted Poor Country initiative and could have profited from it had it not been for the military putsch of December 1999 which produced a recession.

The renewal of relations with the international financial community so as to be able to negotiate with the Bretton Woods institutions demands the preparation of a strategic plan for the reduction of poverty. This has been done and a national committee has been appointed to oversee its implementation for economic development for the benefit of all.

Signed articles represent the views of the authors only, not necessarily those of Socialist Affairs or the Socialist International

TO SUBSCRIBE TO SOCIALIST AFFAIRS

Annual subscription (4 issues):
United Kingdom - 12 pounds sterling
Other countries - 15 pounds sterling

Payment by Sterling cheque made payable to the Socialist International.

Or by Visa or Mastercard (please send name, card number, expiry date, with billing and delivery address).