Half of the Ivory Coast in poverty

A report has the latest numbers on the amount of people in poverty in Cote d'Ivoire. A governmental meeting to produce a debt relief strategy produced the report. Cote d'Ivoire (wiki) is the African continents biggest cocoa grower.

We found the details of the report from a story in IC publications.

Poverty in the West African country of Ivory Coast has soared in the last 23 years and almost half the population lives on less than a euro (1.36 dollars) a day, a report said Monday.

"Today one person in two is poor, against one in 10 in 1985, and in the space of a generation the number of the poor has been multiplied by 10," the Poverty Reduction Strategy Document (DSRP) said.

The study, carried out by the national planning ministry, defines as poor in 2008 an Ivorian spending less than 241,145 CFA Francs (367 euros) a year, or 661 CFA francs (one euro) a day.

"Poverty has therefore seen a developing increase, passing from 10 percent in 1985 to 33.6 percent in 1998 before rising to 38.4 percent in 2002 and then 48.9 percent in 2008, " the report, published at the opening of a workshop at Grand-Bassam, 30 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of Abidjan, said.

The workshop, attended by representatives of the World Bank and the European Union, is designed to validate the DSRP, produced by the Ivorian authorities in support of debt relief.

The report shows that in the countryside 60 percent of the population are poor compared with about half in the cities.

"The poverty rate in rural areas worsened particularly in the recent period coinciding with that of the politico-military crisis," the report said.