Mens rivalerne slås om den politiske magt i Elfenbenskysten og et mæglingsforsøg fra nabolandenes præsidenter endte uden positivt resultat, stiger priserne på basismad som olie, ris og mel dramatisk.
ABIDJAN, 28 December 2010 (IRIN): For now the crunch is hitting mostly poor families, Ivoirians in the commercial capital Abidjan told IRIN. This is a growing population group: In 2008 nearly half of Côte d’Ivoire’s then 20 million people were below the poverty threshold of about 1,25 US dollar per day, compared to about one-third in 2000, and 38 per cent in 2002, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“Poverty has increased on a steady trend in the past 20 years as a result of the successive socio-political and military crises,” IMF said in a May 2009 country report.
“We’re at the end of our tether,” Françoise Mahan, a midwife in Abidjan’s Abobo District, told IRIN, one month after the presidential run-off election which ended in unprecedented deadlock with two political camps claiming power. Already after the October first round, tensions led to some prices creeping up.
“I can no longer get what I need at the market with 2.000 CFA francs [4 US dollar] for my family of three. Now I need about 50 percent more – but at the moment we just can’t afford that.”
Food prices are soaring in Abidjan and other main cities. In the northern city of Odienné and in Gagnoa in central Côte d’Ivoire, before the election crisis a kilogram of sugar cost the equivalent of about 1,25 dollar. It now costs 2,40; and the same goes for a litre of cooking oil. A sack of rice now costs around 35 dollar in Odienné and the centre-north city of Korhogo; families could buy the same sack before the political crisis for around 26.
