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French Foreign Aid Policies in Côte D'ivoire

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French Foreign Aid Policies in Côte D'ivoire French foreign aid policies in Côte d’Ivoire: a continuance of colonial legacies and a cause for the Ivorian state’s legitimacy deficit During and after the First Ivorian Civil War and the Second Ivorian Civil War Name: Anke Besseling Student number: 11013729 Course: Foreign Aid, Development and the Politics of Legitimation in Africa Readers: Dr. Michael Onyebuchi Eze & dr. Sebastian Krapohl Date: 24 June 2019 Word count: 8714 words Source: Ballouhey 2010. Table of contents Introduction 3 Literature review 5 Theoretical framework 8 Methodology 13 Data: case description of Côte d’Ivoire 14 Analysis 18 Conclusion 23 Bibliography 24 2 Introduction The cartoon from 2010 on the title page of this thesis represents French president Nicolas Sarkozy choosing between two Ivorian ‘products’: presidential candidates Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara. France indeed chose one of the two ‘products’: that is, France chose to support Ouattara over Gbagbo. France even helped Ouattara’s forces to arrest Gbagbo on 11 April in 2011. As a result, Ouattara became president of Côte d’Ivoire in 2011. ‘Le France Afrique march encore…’ stands for unequal and exploitative economic relationships between France and (former) French African colonies, which are assumed to still be in place. The term France Afrique was first used in 1955 by the former president of Côte d’Ivoire, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, to describe these ‘good’ economic relationships. That is to say, the France Afrique community received a privileged economic status in France and Europe, France protected African regimes, offered aid packages and supplied African elite leaders with European consumer goods (Bovcon 2009: 283 – 284). This community was used as a political symbol and ideology to authorize development projects of Africa’s natural and human resources, the benefit of which would go to France (Charbonneau 2008: 281; Nantet 2019; O’Connor 1972: 410 – 411; 419). In short, this cartoon satirically explains former power relations, with France as a colonizer and resource exploiter of Côte d’Ivoire, to be relatively similar. Even though, the political situation has formally changed, with Côte d’Ivoire gaining independence from France in 1960. A large volume of academic literature, however, suggests that the economic relationship between France and the Côte d’Ivoire is very similar to how it was before Ivoirian independence (Alesina & Dollar 2000; Schraeder, Hook & Taylor 1998; Cumming 1995). This thesis discusses colonial legacies and the state legitimation of the Ivorian state during and after the First and Second Ivorian Civil War (from 2001 until 2012). I aim to answer the following research question: How did French foreign aid policies maintain colonial legacies and, as a consequence, undermine the state legitimation of Côte d’Ivoire during and after the Ivorian Civil Wars? The focus of this thesis is on French foreign aid and assistance to Côte d’Ivoire during and after the First Ivorian Civil War and the Second Ivorian Civil War. The present thesis refers to foreign aid as public transfers with development as its main purpose (Cumming 1995: 383). Development aid during civil wars mostly accounted for creating stability, democracy, sustainable peace, and protecting economic interests. In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, unrest 3 started with a coup staged by Robert Gueï in 1999, with support from France (Collier 2007: 95; 129). The French government, subsequently, assumed that Robert Gueï, as he had promised, would organize democratic elections in six months after the coup. Gueï did organize elections, but put himself forward as a candidate and did not reintegrate a great number of northern Ivorian without citizenship due to a law implemented by former president Bédié. Moreover, he banned other popular political candidates (idem: 129). Consequently, civil strife images spurred a French intervention in 2002. As a justification for the intervention, France stated it wanted to prevent a ‘rebel’ group from taking over Abidjan. France, however, did not solve the conflict by forcing a compromise settlement or putting down the ‘rebel’ group. The French government only separated clashing groups from each other. Leading to the rearming of conflicting groups, and the government groups attacking French forces, while they had assumed France to protect the ‘rebel’ group (ibid.). In the end, the intervention and interference of other political actors in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002 created circumstances for another war over the same issues – citizenship, identity, and landownership – in 2011 (Mitchell 2012: 278). French involvement and aid during and after these wars, have shown and enhanced a continuance of colonial legacies and, as a result, delegitimizing the struggles of conflicting groups in the process of nation- and state building. This thesis is socially relevant since it examines what decolonization means for both France and Côte d’Ivoire. By doing so, the thesis attempts to reveal the often hidden realities behind the term decolonization. Namely, that even with political decolonization, colonial legacies can still severely affect the political, economic, and social structures within Côte d’Ivoire. Lastly, it will present how French foreign aid undermines Ivoiran state legitimacy, and will suggest what the consequences of such developments can imply on the long-term for the Ivorian state. The scientific relevance of this thesis is in support of economic decolonization. While a lot has been written about French foreign aid to Sub-Saharan African states, French colonial legacies and French military aid to Côte d’Ivoire has not been studied. Besides, this thesis also gives an insight into how aid and involvement in conflicts can, contrary to the French intervention and peace talks in the First Ivorian Civil War, contribute to their true goal: helping impoverished communities and victims of war and creating a strong legitimate state. I will commence with a literature review to present relevant scientific debates concerned with state legitimacy, colonial legacies, foreign aid, and French foreign aid. The literary review is followed by a theoretical framework in which foreign aid, the dependency theory, colonial legacies, and legitimacy are clarified. Following this, the methodology 4 section indicates a qualitative case study. Thereafter, the case description presents a historical context of Côte d’Ivoire. After that, the analysis shows how French foreign aid policies are surveyed and related to the legitimacy of the Ivorian state and the possible persistence of colonial legacies. Finally, in the conclusion the research question is answered. Literature review Legitimacy State legitimacy refers to state action that yields within the scope of the law. This is the case when two conditions are met: firstly, when an action results from a legitimate authority – a political institution that is authorized to take action; secondly, when this action does not violate a legal or moral norm. Furthermore, they argue that legitimacy is ultimately founded in public opinion and that this may contradict abovementioned manners that qualify an action as legitimate (Tucker & Hedrikson 2004: 14). In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, a legitimate authority was lacking before the First Ivorian Civil War. Most people living in the North of Côte d’Ivoire had been rejected Ivorian citizenship, and were unable to influence policy nor make claims in the scope of the law. The violations of a legal or moral norm are, then, context dependent. Colonial legacies Colonial legacies are nowadays still felt by Africans and African states, because of 500 years of European colonial terrorism on African people due to the enslavement of African humans, colonization and the incorporation of Africa into the European-dominated capitalist world- system (Jalata 2013: 1). Through colonial violence on African people, European colonizers were able to control African political economies, enrich their states and companies and incorporate Africa into capitalism (idem: 28). The supremacy of Europeans in the capitalist world system creates a context in which European powers are still able to exploit, abuse and have control over African states, for instance by imposing authoritarian leadership and stimulating particular persons to take leadership in African states (idem: 29). Indeed, western domination of the economic system still leads to unequal power relations between European and African states. This thesis further elaborates that economic decolonization or the fact that economic, political, and cultural self-interest of actors in a 5 capitalist system leads to unequal and exploitative relationships. Moreover, colonial legacies are argued to be a cause of state delegitimization in this thesis. Charbonneau (2008) assumes that France is trying to move away from her neo- colonial tradition by increasingly taking part in multilateral or multinational EU intervention - partly due to international pressure. Although, recent interventions should raise questions to the appeal for an EU intervention (Charbonneau 2008: 279 – 280). An EU intervention will, namely, depend on the willingness of other European -former colonizer - states to intervene and is not more legitimate than a bilateral intervention. Moreover, French and EU security policies have to be understood in the context in which they exist: ‘as interdependent active forces at work in institutionalizing and regulating a liberal world order’ (Charbonneau 2008: 280). Hiding France in a multilateral intervention
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