By Aly Ouattara
FERKE, Northern Côte d'Ivoire, Aug 26 2007 (IPS)

Efforts to resolve the long-running political crisis in Côte d’Ivoire appear to be yielding progress; however, certain traders in land-locked countries to the north are still hesitant to bank on the peace process, and resume use of Ivorian ports.

In 2002, Côte d’Ivoire was split into a rebel-held north and government-controlled south, effectively cutting links between ports and northern states. The division occurred after a failed coup staged by rebel troops who accused authorities of marginalising people in the north, as well as residents of foreign origin.

A peace accord was signed in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, in March. Rebel leader Guillaume Soro was subsequently appointed prime minister in a power-sharing government, and a United Nations buffer zone between north and south dismantled. President Laurent Gbagbo has also spoken of holding elections before the end of the year.

Nonetheless, Malian trader Aboubacar N’diaye is cautious about going back to conducting business as he did before the split.

“After the crisis began in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002, we had more than eight million tonnes of goods blocked at the port of Abidjan,” he told IPS. N’diaye said the Malian government had been obliged to sign agreements with countries such as Ghana and Togo – east of Côte d’Ivoire – to provide alternative routes for the goods. From these countries, freight could be taken through Burkina Faso en route to Mali.

“This transit through Ghana and Burkina Faso cost us a lot of money, some three billion CFA francs (about six million dollars); and, businesspeople who were not financially secure went bankrupt. I’m…not ready yet to relive such an adventure,” he added, at the end of a recent fact-finding trip to Abidjan, which is also the Ivorian economic capital.

Instead, N’diaye prefers to wait until matters in Côte d’Ivoire have returned to normal before using ports in this West African country again. Côte d’Ivoire’s second most important port is San Pedro, in the south-west of the country.

Inoussa Maïga, a Nigerien who exports onions to Côte d’Ivoire, emphasises that the strife in this state did not only take a toll on traffic making its way to and from Ivorian ports – but also on other forms of cross-border trade.

“The importance of commercial relations between Côte d’Ivoire and Niger is not only in terms of port transit, but also in exchanges of Ivorian manufactured goods and products from the Nigerien agriculture sector.”

“Any malfunction in Ivorian industry has direct repercussions for Nigerien economic activities,” he adds, citing the importance of products such as vegetable oil, construction materials, butane gas, soap and plastic goods that Nigeriens import from Côte d’Ivoire.

Maïga says the Ivorian market offers a large outlet for Nigerien products such as onions, and for the sale of cattle from Niger. More than 30 percent of Nigerien onions are exported to Côte d’Ivoire, he notes: “We keep hoping that Côte d’Ivoire will rapidly return to peace, because onions are a highly perishable product. The smallest slowing of their sales could have serious economic consequences for Nigerien traders and producers.”

Maïga, too, is waiting for normality to resume in Côte d’Ivoire before continuing use of the country’s ports.

For retired Ivorian economist Bakary Méité, such hesitations are justified. “The continental Sahelian countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were…affected by the socio-political crisis in Côte d’Ivoire…” he said, noting that 75 percent of imports to these countries are channelled through Abidjan’s port facilities.

These views are echoed by another economist, Emmanuel Digbeu, who is based in the Ivorian political capital of Yamoussoukro.

In addition, he says, “This crisis revealed a certain lack of foresight on the part of traders in land-locked Francophone countries of the Sahel, which had never thought to look for a diversification of their sources of supplies.”

Accordingly, Digbeu has suggested that these states consider strategies to help them make use of alternative ports.

According to port authorities in Abidjan, freight exchanged between Côte d’Ivoire and countries of the Sahel declined dramatically as a result of the political difficulties, going from about 1.4 million tonnes in 2002 to just over 200,000 tonnes in 2003 – a decrease of 85.4 percent.

For Burkina Faso, the main foreign client for the port of Abidjan, it fell from 27,719 tonnes in 2003 to 471 tonnes in 2002, or by some 94 percent.

In a bid to renew trading ties, port officials started holding meetings in Côte d’Ivoire’s land-locked neighbours towards the end of July.

Speaking in Ouagadougou, the director of the port of Abidjan, Marcel Gossio, noted that there would be a resumption of escorts for convoys travelling between Sahelien countries and Ivorian ports.

Those using Ivorian roads are often subject to extortion by security forces, both soldiers under rebel control, and troops loyal to the government.

“It’s…better if the port of Abidjan can enable us to conduct our activities in peace,” said Seydou Samaké, a Malian importer of fuel. “With Côte d’Ivoire, we have many advantages that the crisis interrupted. But we think that with the latest decisions to be taken, we will consider returning there.”

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