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Ivory Coast
Index
For centuries Côte d'Ivoire has been the scene of
social and
economic change brought about by cross-cultural contact,
trans-Saharan and coastal trade, and innovation by local
inhabitants. Established patterns of change were
dramatically
altered by the imposition of colonial rule and the
transition to
independence, and by the 1980s patterns of social and
cultural
change reflected responses to these disruptions and to the
processes and policies of government.
The colonial imposition of plantation agriculture
allowed the
emergence of the first nontraditional African elite, when
those who
could claim rights to land began to employ farm laborers
to produce
cash crops for the colonial regime
(see Economic Development and Social Change
, ch. 1). This group of planters, as they
came to be
known, formed the core of the earliest Ivoirian political
machine,
which continued to influence the course of change in the
1980s.
Alongside the rural elite, a fledgling civil servant
middle class
also appeared in response to the needs of the bureaucracy,
as new
levels of political awareness and activism surfaced
throughout the
region.
The African Agricultural Union (Syndicat Agricole
Africain-
-SAA), formed in 1944 as a union of planters, led the
opposition to
colonial agricultural policies
(see Brazzaville Conference
, ch. 1).
Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a Baoulé elder and French-trained
medical
doctor, became head of the SAA and of the preindependence
movement,
the Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire (Parti Démocratique
de la
Côte d'Ivoire--PDCI), which emerged to lead the struggle.
The PDCI
emphasized participation through traditional ethnic group
leaders
and ethnic committees (comités ethniques). Ethnic
committees
helped channel grass-roots participation in the political
process,
but in 1985 they were replaced by local committees
(comités de
base).
From the French perspective, those who had gained
wealth and
prestige by exploiting new opportunities in the changing
environment were considered most qualified for political
decision
making on behalf of the colony
(see Evolution of Colonial Policy
, ch. 1). Houphouët-Boigny gained a multiethnic constituency
as
leader of the PDCI by acting as a broker between colonial
officials
and emerging African elites, and especially by opposing
colonial
forced-labor policies. During the 1950s, the PDCI
gradually adopted
a strategy of collaboration with colonial officials, a
strategy
Houphouët-Boigny pursued successfully enough to become the
nation's
first president at independence in 1960.
Even as an early leader in the preindependence PDCI,
Houphouët-Boigny had defined interest groups and
grievances for the
nation. In 1974, after a decade of moderate discontent and
dissidence, he convened a series of dialogues that served
the dual
purpose of airing cross-ethnic grievances and maintaining
the
president's image as a traditional-style leader, using the
analogy
of the African "palaver" (palabre). Teachers,
students,
former students, parents of students, tenants, union
members, union
leaders, transporters, the military, and the party youth
wing, the
Movement of Ivoirian Primary and Secondary School Students
(Mouvement des Etudiants et Elèves de Cô d'Ivoire--MEECI),
were
invited. Excluded were representatives of the growing
number of
unemployed and of ethnic groups, with the notable
exception of the
Lebanese community.
Economic modernization paralleled political and social
change
in the shift from colonial to African power arrangements.
Spurred
by the opening of the Vridi Canal to the Gulf of Guinea in
1950 and
the concentration of government functions in the
southeastern port
of Abidjan, population migration toward the south
increased, and
secondary towns developed along routes to Abidjan.
Modernization
essentially became the process of urbanization, and the
distinction
between urban and rural came to symbolize the widening
rift between
rich and poor.
Data as of November 1988
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