allAfrica.com: Kenya: Why the Cote d'Ivoire Disaster is Echoed in the Country's Crisis (Page 1 of 3)

Like Kenya in East Africa, Cote d'Ivoire was the model of economic prosperity and political stability in West Africa for nearly three decades until something went terribly wrong and the country unravelled in a way that has several uncanny parallels with Kenya. In this first of a two-part series TONY ELUEMUNOR, NATION Correspondent, West Africa, reports

Until about a decade ago, Cote d'Ivoire was, as people on the street would say, the "Kenya of West Africa" - politically stable as its neighbours succumbed to brutal military coups and civil strife.

Although some countries like Senegal escaped this fate, from Mali to Nigeria, one West African country after another fell to military rule or a murderous civil war and in some cases, both.

In Eastern Africa, too, as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the former Zaire, the Republic of Congo, Sudan and Somalia either fell apart or were consumed by genocidal conflict or brutal military rule, Kenya (and Tanzania) almost alone survived. And even in comparison to Tanzania, Kenya had a growing free market economy while Tanzania remained hobbled by a misbegotten socialist experiment that failed to put food on many tables.

Cote d'Ivoire was an oddity in the West African sub-region. Like Kenya, it became not just an engine of economic growth but a veritable powerhouse, achieving impressive economic figures almost unheard of in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Abidjan was clean and relatively violence-free. The roads were good and electricity and water reliable even as decay ate deep into the innards of the capitals of its neighbours.

As Nairobi became the home of two UN specialised agencies and the regional headquarters for many other international organisations, Abidjan hosted the African Development Bank, several other regional organisations and a large expatriate population.

In East Africa, Tanzania boasted more wildlife. But that didn't matter as Kenya's "Out of Africa" mystique and superior tourist infrastructure drew in the visitors and their dollars.

In West Africa, even though there may have been more elephants in Guinea or even Nigeria, tourists preferred Cote d'Ivoire , which was much easier to navigate. Safari tourism in West Africa was synonymous with Cote d'Ivoire. Nigeria, on the other hand, conjured up images of political instability, lawlessness and decaying infrastructure in a very big country that has refused to demonstrate continental leadership and whose citizens have remained poor despite its vast resources, oil in particular.

Today, not many people in Africa remember the province of Upper Volta in the former French West African federation that was made up of landlocked Upper Volta and Cote d'Ivoire . In 1984 President Thomas Sankara changed the name of the former to Burkina Faso.

From the 1960s and through the 1980s, Cote d'Ivoire remained in the firm grip of its benign strongman, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, an authoritarian figure who had a number of things in common with Kenya's founding father Jomo Kenyatta who died in 1978.

Until Houphouet's death in 1993, it had seemed as though Cote d'Ivoire would live happily ever after. Since independence in 1960, Cote d'Ivoire had known no other ruler with Houphouet, its undisputed head, treating the country like one big family.

Cote d'Ivoire seemed as stable as the earth itself, and like the earth, able to accommodate the most variegated life, just as Kenya in its heyday.

But after Houphouet's death, political cracks began to appear in the country's superficially neat, functional and enlightened exterior. Ethnic divisions became more pronounced, the line between the arid north and the humid south hardened and the violence spawned by political and electoral disagreements unleashed the evil force that has engulfed one African nation after another.

Ambassador Ralph Uwechue, publisher of the now-defunct pan-African magazine Africa, once called this evil force the "problem of demographics." He was referring to the different ethnic groups that make up most African states that were lumped together into geographical entities carved out by European colonisation and whose differences burst into the open after independence because of disagreements over power-sharing and the unequal distribution of national wealth.

In Cote d'Ivoire, the most obvious reason for the breakdown was succession rivalry, and the most immediate effect evolved as it did in Kenya.

In 2002, when Raila Odinga uttered his famous "Kibaki tosha" (No one but Kibaki) declaration, he insured that the previously unsuccessful presidential aspirant would emerge as the leader - and later victorious candidate- of the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc). Kibaki's decision not to honour the memorandum of understanding with the Odinga-led Liberal Democratic Party (now defunct) that would have led to the creation of an executive prime minister's office and the appointment of Odinga to that position sowed the seeds of the feud that would lead to the collapse of the Narc government in 2005 after Odinga and his allies led a successful opposition in a constitutional referendum.

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