Cote d’Ivoire received more than $15 billion in pledges from donors and lenders to fund its five-year development plan, almost double the amount it sought at a Paris meeting that showcased the world’s top cocoa grower as an investors’ favorite in Africa.
The West African nation wanted to secure at least 4,425 billion CFA francs ($8.8 billion) in pledges to fund part of a $60 billion investment plan for the period 2016-2020, according to a government statement e-mailed late Tuesday. The high level of pledges showed the “full support of the international community” for its policies, the statement said.
“This is really spectacular news for the country,” John Ashbourne, an Africa economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said in e-mailed comments Wednesday. “It’s more than twice the country’s total government budget.”
Cocoa prices rose last year, strengthening Cote d’Ivoire’s outlook, while South Africa and Nigeria, the region’s two biggest economies, have been battered by a global slump in commodity prices. The country’s successful Paris meeting will put “a lot more attention on countries like Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire, which have relatively diversified economies and which have avoided the commodity-induced bust we’ve seen elsewhere,” Ashbourne said.
