President Alassane Dramane Ouattara, on the third republic: Viewpoint

Viewpoint: President Alassane Dramane Ouattara

During the 2010 presidential campaign, I committed myself to provide Côte d’Ivoire with a new constitution, that of the third republic. However, given the post-electoral crisis, we had to face urgent matters such as the return to peace; national reconciliation and social cohesion; institutional normalisation; and the recovery of the economy.

Thanks to combined efforts from the government and the Ivorian people, we have brought back peace and ensured the security of the people and property throughout our territory. We have established the Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, through which we were able to identify the root causes of the divide which has dislocated our nation, and to learn lessons from the crises that have afflicted us. By means of the National Commission for Reconciliation and Indemnification of Victims we have begun the indemnity procedure for the victims of the different crises that our country has gone through.

We have restored the state’s authority throughout the territory. We have restarted our public administration and rehabilitated basic social services. We have quickly engaged the institutional normalisation process to endow our country with strong and credible institutions, so that they can match the pace of our country’s development. A turning point, and perhaps one of the most important of this institutional normalisation, has been the organisation of legislative elections – an important event for the consolidation of our democratic advances.

We have invested several hundreds of billions of Ivorian francs to restore our infrastructure, offer better living conditions to our citizens and change the image of our country. Thus, hundreds of km of highways and thousands of km of other roads have been rehabilitated and built to connect our population and facilitate trade. We have ensured access to drinkable water for millions of Ivorians and have connected several localities to the electricity grid.

We have invested massively in our schools and universities to offer our youth an adequate educational and training framework, thus giving them a chance to succeed for themselves and their families. We have rehabilitated and built health care centres and hospitals throughout the country so that all Ivorians have access to the best medical care within their immediate environment.

We have restated and restarted our economy to the point of making it one of the most dynamic in the world, with an annual GDP growth rate of 9% on average. We have redistributed the fruits of this growth by increasing the salaries of public workers, doubling the minimum salary, financing projects for hundreds of thousands of women and young people, and creating more than a million new jobs in five years. Thus, poverty has receded in our country. In this regard, I wish to reiterate our commitment to create even more jobs for our youth by means of sustained economic growth, driven by the actions of the Youth Employment Agency.

We have done everything possible so that our farmers benefit from better remuneration for their work. Indeed, the price for a kg of cacao has reached, for the first time, the historic threshold of CFA1000 (€1.53) during the last season. Additionally, since October 1, 2016 the country has set the price of a kg at CFA1100 (€1.68).

Overall, the daily lives of our rural citizens have considerably improved through the increase of their revenues as well as the increased proximity to basic social services such as water, health facilities, schooling and electricity.

All these results have been achieved thanks to the solidarity of the executive and legislative branches. These results have been positively recognised by our citizens through an incredible turnout during the October 2015 presidential election, which was able to take place under a climate of peace.