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Ivory Coast). The teaching is clearly not adapted to the real needs of the countries. The aim of this aid is stated as follows in an official report: "the most disinterested initiatives are not the least profitable: the help France gives to the formation of cadres in the underdevel. oped countrics tends to create, through the cultural impregnation which is involved, an environment which is favorable to the spread of our techniques, and thus of our merchandise."* At the State Monopoly Capitalism stage, public funds are used as a means to create conditions of good profitability for the private capital invested. "When a company or a manufacturer, it is not really important which, invests in a State in the franc area, there is a clear awareness that its investment only represents about a third of the real investment which will bring the profits."* Agricultural productivity remains very low and a large proportion of agricultural production still is so removed from trade that these States have to import food to provide for the big towns swollen by a significant rural exodus. In 1968, the African States in the franc arca imported over 250,000 tons of rice for nearly ten billion CFA francs (African francs), nearly 200,000 tons of wheat, 15,000 tons of maize, 30,000 tons of millet and sorghum. Unemployment and underemployment have gone up in all sectors of society, including in-tellectuals.
Consumption crops continue to be neglected in favor of export crops. These are exposed to the fall in world prices. The arrangements for special terms of sale on the French market for peanuts, cotton and coffee were ended when the African countries were associated with the Common Market. If there were partial measures of transitional aid, now prices are on the world level. The savanna countries are experiencing the reduction in the price of cotton and peanuts. 1968-70 were very dry years. Sales of fertilizer fell, In 1971 the situation got even worse and there was the problem of famine in Mauritania, Mali and Niger. Exports of peanuts from Senegal were halted. Rural incomes fell. Production of goods for sale fell from one million tons in 1961 to less than 600,000 tons in 69/70. Here are the consequences of "cooperation" to his country, the Ivory Coast, by a writer who supports the policy: the Ivory Coast economy is fragile because it is essentially agricultural and therefore at the mercy of all the vicissitudes of the climate and of prices.
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