About Côte d’ivoire
Côte d’ivoire was previously the economic miracle of Africa and a role model for solidity on the continent. Never completely breaking from their colonial masters, the post-independence leaders wooed French capital to establish a modern infrastructure and considerable prosperity. The long-serving and charismatic first president, Houphouët-boigny, promoted the notion of a happy amalgam of pragmatic Western capitalism with benign African values. The society he presided over, however, was decidedly from liberal and the dream ended with his death. A consequent string of coups and favoured insurgencies shook the country, and northern-led rebellion in 2002 violently cleave it in half. Most of the gigantic French-expat community jumped ship, and the economy has since crumbled.