Côte d’Ivoire

The chapter tells the story of capital flight from Côte d’Ivoire, focusing on the cocoa sector. The impressive economic growth fueled by cocoa exports after independence, once hailed as the “Ivorian miracle,” evaporated after the collapse of cocoa prices and the explosion of foreign debt. As the country plunged into an economic crisis, followed by a political crisis that culminated in civil war, the primary commodity sector continued to be highly vulnerable to illicit financial flows. The chapter traces the continuities and changes across political regimes since independence in the mechanisms of resource rent capture and personal enrichment and the roles of the key national and foreign players. It shows how the patronage nexus linking state power to market power contributed to large-scale capital flight and the failure of the country to take full advantage of its natural resource endowments.