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Ivory Coast
Index
Most Ivoirians were members of a traditional agrarian
society
and virtually all able-bodied adults worked. Just over one
third
were subsistence farmers who raised little beyond their
immediate
needs. In 1982 the economically active population numbered
approximately 4.3 million, of whom about 47 percent were
women.
Approximately 85 percent of this population engaged in
farming,
herding, fishing, or forestry, as opposed to nearly 90
percent in
1962. At independence, agriculture accounted for 45
percent of all
wage earners; 40 percent were employed in industry,
commerce, and
services, and 15 percent were government employees. In
1960
unskilled workers constituted approximately 67 percent of
the
entire labor force; skilled workers and technicians, 19
percent;
white-collar workers, 11 percent; and executive and
managerial
positions, 3 percent. In 1982 unskilled workers made up
about 80
percent of the work force; skilled workers, 17 percent;
and
managerial and professional workers, 3 percent. According
to a 1985
census, the largest employer was the government, which
employed
110,670 people (not including the armed forces), or
approximately
7 percent of the nonagricultural work force. Of these
workers,
81,561 were in the civil service, and the rest were in
state-owned
companies.
In 1968 the government created the Office for the
Promotion of
Ivoirian Enterprise (Office de Promotion de l'Enterprise
Ivoirienne--OPEI) to reduce--or appear to reduce--the
country's
dependence on foreign entrepreneurial expertise. The OPEI
was to
help develop or improve the efficiency of Ivoirian
commercial,
industrial, and agricultural enterprises by providing
studies,
statistics, administrative assistance, and training for
local
entrepreneurs. In fact, the OPEI focused only on
small-scale
entrepreneurs, such as bakers, carpenters, tailors,
plumbers, and
electricians. These efforts could not--and apparently were
not
intended to--produce the high-level managerial expertise
that would
reduce the country's dependence on expatriate initiative,
skills,
and technology.
Until the mid-1980s, non-Africans--mostly French--still
dominated the managerial and professional cadres. In 1973
the
government set up the National Commission on
Ivoirianization to
encourage the appointment of Ivoirians to managerial posts
throughout the economy. Although Ivoirianization of
management was
the announced purpose of the commission, Ivoirianization
was not to
be implemented at the expense of efficiency. Consequently,
most
Ivoirianization programs in commerce and industry were
voluntary
and produced only modest results. According to official
figures, in
1979 Ivoirians held only 23 percent of senior management
positions
and 44 percent of junior management posts in all private,
public,
and parastatal enterprises. By 1982 the percentage of
Ivoirians in
senior management positions had actually dropped slightly
to 21
percent; for junior-level management posts, the percentage
had
risen to 52 percent. Among the country's 300 largest
companies,
Ivoirians still filled only 29 percent of top management
posts,
compared with 67.4 percent that were filled by
non-Africans. The
remaining 3.6 percent were filled by non-Ivoirian
Africans. In
addition, many Europeans worked as mechanics, technicians,
and shop
owners, underscoring Côte d'Ivoire's continued reliance on
foreign
initiative and skills.
The government also employed a large number of European
teachers and technical experts known as
coopérants (see Glossary).
Most were recruited by the French Ministry of
Cooperation, but others were hired directly by the
Ivoirian
government through private, usually French, firms on a
contract
basis. The Ivoirian government was responsible for 80
percent of
the total cost of those hired under official cooperation
agreements
and for 100 percent of the cost of those hired under
private
contract. Pressures for Ivoirianization and the economic
recession
of the early 1980s prompted a gradual reduction in the
number of
coopérants from a peak of 4,000 in 1980 to 3,200 in
1984.
Over the next two years, as economic conditions worsened
and as
more Ivoirian university graduates took over teaching jobs
in
secondary schools, this number fell by 1,000.
The privately recruited foreign experts were employed
mainly as
technical advisers in government ministries and in state
enterprises. As part of a series of austerity measures,
the IMF
insisted that 585 of the 650 foreign experts on government
payrolls
be let go. Those foreign experts allowed to stay were in
highly
specialized areas, such as the petroleum sector and
computer
technology. Despite the IMF dictum, by the end of 1987
there were
still 425 privately recruited foreign experts, costing the
government CFA F11 billion annually. In November 1987, the
government recommended that these experts be retained only
if their
presence was "indispensable in certain high technology
areas not
yet mastered by nationals."
Côte d'Ivoire also depended on foreigners for unskilled
labor.
Since the early twentieth century, poor migrants from
Burkina Faso,
Mali, and other parts of West Africa had worked in Côte
d'Ivoire as
agricultural and construction laborers. Because
immigration has
been largely uncontrolled, estimates of the number of
immigrants
have varied by as much as 100 percent, ranging from 1
million to 2
million, and accounted for 70 percent to 80 percent of the
unskilled labor force in the rural sector. According to
official
figures for 1974 (the most recent year for which they were
available in 1988), 81.8 percent of the salaried positions
in the
primary sector (agriculture and raw materials) were filled
by nonIvoirian Africans, while only 16.9 percent were filled by
Ivoirians. The figures, however, were skewed somewhat by
the fact
that most Ivoirians in the primary sector were
self-employed or
were working for family members. The labor force shifted
easily
between regions and occupational sectors. Surveys have
shown that
half the migrant farm laborers changed their employment
every two
months, and even the more permanent wage earners moved
freely from
job to job in search of higher pay and more attractive
working
conditions. The greatest movement occurred between the
traditional
and the modern sectors of the economy, as farmers from
subsistence
areas took temporary wage employment to meet specific cash
needs.
This mobility contributed to the lack of training and
skills and
the low productivity among nonagricultural workers.
Data as of November 1988
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