When Félix Houphouët-Boigny takes the reins of a newly sovereign state, there is no question of him improvising. The man, former minister of the French Republic, prosperous planter and fine political tactician, has a clear and clear conviction about the future of his country. Economic development is the first condition for political freedom. For him, independence is worthless if it does not lead to the well-being of the populations. This is why, from the first hours of independence, he formulated an industrial vision clearly articulated around a guiding principle. Namely making liberal capitalism the engine of national development. Unlike his African counterparts who then turned to socialist or communist models, Houphouët-Boigny made the deliberate choice of economic liberalism and a strategic alliance with the West, in particular with France. His philosophy is based on a simple but radical idea for the time. Rather than nationalizing and closing the doors to foreign investors, we must attract them, reassure them and involve them in national construction. Côte d'Ivoire will, according to him, be a welcoming land for capital, skills and technologies from elsewhere.

Agriculture as an industrial base

Houphouët-Boigny's strategy is based on a fundamental economic intuition, industry can develop only if it is based on flourishing agriculture. In other words, the factory must arise from the fields. This approach, described as "agro-industrial", is based on the observation that Côte d'Ivoire has a considerable natural advantage, its fertile lands, its tropical climate, its dense forests, which must be exploited methodically before claiming heavy industrialization. Thus, the decade 1960-1970 saw an explosion of export crops. Between 1960 and 1970, cocoa crops tripled their production to reach 312,000 tons, coffee crops increased by half from 185,500 to 275,000 tons, while wood exports jumped from 90,000 tons in 1950 to 1,250,000 tons in 1965. Bananas (150,000 tons in 1965) and pineapples (40,000 tonnes) complete an exceptional agricultural picture. Cotton, encouraged in the northern regions, opened up new industrial prospects for spinning mills. This agricultural boom is organized and regulated by the State through the Agricultural Production Price Stabilization and Support Fund (CAISTAB), created in 1955 and consolidated after independence. CAISTAB guarantees planters a minimum purchase price, lower than the market price but considered satisfactory, while allowing the State to maintain a monopoly on exports of coffee, cocoa and cotton. This mechanism generates considerable financial resources which will fuel national projects, including industrialization. 

A construction workforce

Ivory Coast in 1960 inherited a predominantly rural and poorly educated population. National technical and administrative executives are rare, the result of a colonial policy which invested little in the training of local elites. Faced with this reality, the President is adopting a pragmatic two-pronged strategy: on the one hand, maintaining and even encouraging the presence of a French expatriate community providing technical expertise, and on the other hand, investing massively in national training. Thus, the country welcomes thousands of French development workers who provide technical assistance to ministries, public companies and emerging industrial projects. This dependence is assumed by Houphouët-Boigny as a transitional necessity, not as a weakness. At the same time, the first Ivorian higher education institutions are strengthened, and scholarships are granted to many young Ivorians sent to Europe. The Movement of Students and Pupils of Côte d'Ivoire (MEECI), founded in 1969, reflects the attention paid by the regime to student youth as future qualified human resources. To compensate for the lack of labor on plantations and construction sites, the government is also promoting the immigration of workers from neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea, who will swell the ranks of agricultural workers and industrial laborers. This demographic policy contributes to supplying an abundant, inexpensive workforce, which promotes the competitiveness of the first production units.

Light industry on the front line

The Ivorian industrial strategy of the 1960s does not target heavy industry (steel, chemicals, mechanics) as country has neither the capital, nor the mineral raw materials, nor the technical skills to develop immediately. It relies on light industry, focused on the processing of local agricultural products and the satisfaction of growing domestic demand. Concretely, the decade saw the installation of flour mills, oil mills and other industries of this style, which transformed cocoa, palm oil, pineapples and tomatoes into semi-finished or finished products intended for export or local consumption. Spinning mills were born to transform cotton from the North into threads and fabrics. Industrial sawmills are set up to add value to wood, moving from a simple export of logs to on-site processing that creates added value. This strategy of import substitution and local valorization responded to a double imperative. The aim was to create added value on Ivorian soil and generate formal jobs in an economic fabric that was still largely informal. The result is spectacular. Between 1960 and 1973, industrial production recorded an average annual growth rate of 20%, increasing the share of industry in GDP from 15 to 25%. The cumulative turnover of large and small industry increased from 13.5 billion CFA francs to 164 billion over this same period.

The limits of a dependent model

From the end of the 1960s, certain fragilities of the industrial model Ivory Coast are beginning to emerge. Dependence on foreign capital and expatriate expertise makes the national economy vulnerable to external hazards. Established light industries are often focused on the export of minimally processed products, without integration into solid local sectors. The training of national technical staff, although started, is progressing slowly in the face of the growing needs of a rapidly expanding economy. Furthermore, the strategy of attracting foreign investments, if it proves profitable in the short term, does not previously promote the emergence of autonomous national entrepreneurship. Ivorian companies remain little present in modern industrial sectors, largely dominated by subsidiaries of French groups or other multinationals. It must be said, despite these limitations, the 1960-1970 decade laid the foundations of an industrial economy that Côte d'Ivoire is preparing to consolidate in the 1970s. The average growth rate of 7.3% recorded over the period of the ten-year plan makes Côte d'Ivoire one of the most dynamic economies on the African continent. This result is all the more remarkable as it exceeds the performances of black African countries and even those of many Western countries during the same period. 

The horizon of the “Ivorian miracle”, which in the 1970s would become a reference in Africa and in the world, was clearly emerging at the end of this first founding decade. Côte d'Ivoire has, in 10 years, succeeded in transforming a colonial economy into an embryonic modern industrial economy. It is not yet the factory of the world, but it is already, by far, the factory of West Africa. And for a country which was barely celebrating its tenth anniversary of independence, it was already a remarkable achievement, living proof that with a clear vision, well-mobilized resources and an appropriate strategy, an African country could write its own economic future.