A fantastically written article, which goes well into depth on the history of the Ivory Coast and its erstwhile "benevolent" dictator. Worth an hour if you have one.
To me, though, he seems to adopt the usual sophomoric mistaken approach of identifying the cause of a calamity in many different places, which is what I did in my IB extended essay about the fall of Suharto in Indonesia. Now I feel a little embarrassed looking back on this: I was trying too hard not to be wrong, and covering all of my bases in accordance. Of course, that was sixteen years ago, and I was in high school.
In so doing, he buried what seems like the biggest mistake at the end: Côte d'Ivoire bled its own economy nearly to death when cacao prices collapsed in the '80s by internally subsidizing exports of its theretofore most profitable crop. Then they killed the whole industry while trying to set up a cacao OPEC, forgetting that it would be a lot easier for rich countries to just go without chocolate than to live without oil. Sure, war and corruption are bad, but plenty of countries had better performance despite them than CdI did during its long fall. In some sense, the logical comparison is Venezuela's self-sabotaging response to the PDVSA strike of 2002 [1].
It's also another case study in the enduring power of roads: for all the mistakes, CdI built the best road network in West Africa, and those roads are mostly still there, probably helping propel its recent recovery at a faster pace than its neighbors. Almost like a tiny Rome.
> Then they killed the whole industry while trying to set up a cacao OPEC, forgetting that it would be a lot easier for rich countries to just go without chocolate than to live without oil.
The rich countries didn't go without chocolate: other cacao producers were more than happy to pick up the slack and collect the extra profits.
OPEC is remarkable mostly as a rare example of a successful international cartel, and even then
its history is riven with constant squabbles, sales off the books etc, and these days it's a shadow of its former self because Russia and now the US (thanks fracking) don't play ball.
While Russia hasn't been a part of OPEC, so wouldn't be the cause of OPEC only now failing to maintain a cartel, it's important context to know that Russia and OPEC frequently collude on oil price manipulation together via OPEC+.
For example, last month: "Oil prices edged higher on Monday after top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia reaffirmed their commitment to extra voluntary oil supply cuts until the end of the year."
To me, though, he seems to adopt the usual sophomoric mistaken approach of identifying the cause of a calamity in many different places, which is what I did in my IB extended essay about the fall of Suharto in Indonesia. Now I feel a little embarrassed looking back on this: I was trying too hard not to be wrong, and covering all of my bases in accordance. Of course, that was sixteen years ago, and I was in high school.
In so doing, he buried what seems like the biggest mistake at the end: Côte d'Ivoire bled its own economy nearly to death when cacao prices collapsed in the '80s by internally subsidizing exports of its theretofore most profitable crop. Then they killed the whole industry while trying to set up a cacao OPEC, forgetting that it would be a lot easier for rich countries to just go without chocolate than to live without oil. Sure, war and corruption are bad, but plenty of countries had better performance despite them than CdI did during its long fall. In some sense, the logical comparison is Venezuela's self-sabotaging response to the PDVSA strike of 2002 [1].
It's also another case study in the enduring power of roads: for all the mistakes, CdI built the best road network in West Africa, and those roads are mostly still there, probably helping propel its recent recovery at a faster pace than its neighbors. Almost like a tiny Rome.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDVSA#Politicization