Sweating It Out in Abidjan

Despite setbacks, the Ivory Coast remains a rare success story

For residents of Abidjan, the Ivory Coast’s modern capital, the crisis seemed to evolve with the inevitability of a malevolent natural force. Two months ago, the electricity in shops and office buildings began to flicker and die for an hour or so at lunchtime. Gradually, larger areas of the city went dark; air conditioners, refrigerators and TV sets winked off. Now the entire city, as well as outlying coastal areas, is afflicted by crippling power outages.

The blackouts have spurred stinging broadsides from the press and public about government mismanagement. More important, they are causing concern that after two decades of prosperity, the Ivory Coast is lapsing into the kind of decay that has plagued so much of the continent. That worry seems to be exaggerated. “The Ivory Coast is an economic success even by Western standards,” says a Western diplomat in Abidjan. “Where else in Africa do you have the man in the street grumbling about his refrigerator and TV not working for a few months? The vast majority of Africans don’t even own them.”

The acute power shortage is the result of a two-year drought that has all but stilled the hydroelectric system, which supplies 92% of the country’s energy. Unfortunately, it occurred as the economy was already struggling with the effects of a slowdown that began in 1977, when earnings from key exports, especially cocoa and coffee, dropped 40%. Without electricity, industrial capacity has plunged an estimated 35%. Construction is off 50%. Total business losses are officially placed at $80 million so far this winter, out of an annual G.N.P. of $10 billion. Lacina Coulibaly, president of an

Abidjan firm that manufactures jeans, guesses that his company’s forced switch to gas-oil generators has increased his overhead 250%.

In spite of the current setbacks, Abidjan’s skyline remains a tribute to the prosperity that has been generated under French-educated President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, 78, who has ruled the country since it became independent from France in 1960. With its sleek office towers dominated by the elliptical 30-story post office building, the modular Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie and the new Abidjan Hilton, the city’s profile is reminiscent of Florida’s Epcot Center. Traffic across the Pont Général De Gaulle bustles every bit as much as along the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., and even an occasional water skier can be spotted crisscrossing the wake of an outboard on the lagoon-like Cocody Bay.

Under Houphouët-Boigny’s leadership, the Ivory Coast successfully developed a mixed economy that encouraged foreign investment, local private owner ship and economic diversification. Unlike many African leaders, he assiduously en couraged a strong agricultural sector and spent the money necessary to maintain roads, rural electrification and irrigation systems. Houphouët-Boigny was also not afraid to keep strong ties with the country’s former colonial master. There are more French in the Ivory Coast now than when the country became independent.

“We will meet in ten years to see which of our systems has done more to raise the living standards of our people,” Houphouët-Boigny challenged Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s fiery socialist leader, in 1957. Houphouët-Boigny won hands down. Ivorians now enjoy a per capita G.N.P. of $1,200 annually, one of the highest in black Africa, vs. $400 for Ghanaians.

Houphouët-Boigny’s government has reacted to criticism about the power shortages by conceding that it failed in the mid-’70s to supplement its hydroelectric system with new steam-powered generating plants. Major dams on the Sassandra, Bandama and Bia rivers are all but dry.

Says Konan Lambert, head of the state-run power authority: “We were deceived by nature.”

Still, most experts are optimistic about the future. Inflation has come down from 12.8% in 1980 to 8% last year, although unemployment, unofficially estimated at 20%, continues to rise. Still, the Ivory Coast has been lucky. Tribal strife is rare. There may even be a solution to the energy problem soon. In 1977 a consortium of oil companies discovered oil a few miles west of Abidjan; beginning this year, the country will be self-sufficient in oil. The Ivory Coast’s period of relative economic stagnation does not seem to have affected its appeal as the premier West African commercial center. “I haven’t heard of a single firm threatening to leave,” says a U.S. diplomat in Abidjan.

“No one is spooked.”

Considering how closely the Ivory Coast’s fortunes have been tied to Houphouët-Boigny’s personal leadership, his failure to appoint a successor has raised questions about the durability of the country’s wellbeing. Most citizens believe that, as a Western resident put it, he “ha institutionalized a way of conducting government and business” that will outlive him. Nonetheless, Houphouët-Boigny’ subtle blend of entrepreneurial acumen and autocratic benevolence may prove difficult to replace. — By Russ Hoyle Reported by William Blaylock/Abidjan