The Company Total was established in Côte d’Ivoire in 1947 and currently engages in downstream, refining and marketing activities. Its main assets include a gas filling centre (domestic liquefied natural gas), two aviation fuel depots (Abidjan and Yamoussoukro) and participation in the national refinery company, Société Ivoirienne de Raffinage. With 158 gas stations across the country,…
The Company Unilever CI is the leading manufacturer of household cleaning products, personal and dental hygiene, and food products in Côte d’Ivoire. In December 2008 Unilever CI divested its oil activity to SIFCA Group and acquired Cosmivoire’s (SIFCA Group) soap activities to refocus its business portfolio on the production and distribution of soaps, detergent and cosmetics products – which…
Côte d’Ivoire is aiming to increase the contribution of its industrial sector to the national economy from 25% at present to 40% by 2020 as part of a brand new, fouryear industrial programme. Known as the National Enterprise and Restructuring and Upgrading Programme (Programme National de Restructuration et de Mise à Niveau, PNRMN), and launched in March 2014, the initiative has been developed…
Broad economic recovery, with real GDP growth at 8.7% in 2013 — albeit from a low base — bodes well for Côte d’Ivoire’s retail sector. According to the IMF, the country’s current positive macro-economic outlook is supported by “sustained strong domestic demand”, aided in part by low inflationary pressure of 1.2%. The forecast, combined with a gradual rise in household income, is set…
The mining sector is a key pillar of Côte d’Ivoire’s economic diversification strategy due to both its high potential for foreign investment and government revenues and its currently low level of development. Much of the modest attention the mining sector has received thus far has been focused on gold and, to a lesser extent, manganese and diamonds which, until recently, were banned from exportation…
The government has set up an export council charged with implementing a strategy to diversify the world’s leading cocoa exporter away from its traditional markets and provide a roadmap for realising opportunities related to mining and rubber, among other segments. The National Export Council (Conseil National des Exportations, CNE) was established in June 2014 following the government’s fourth…
Historically, Côte d’Ivoire served as the francophone regional headquarters for a number of international advertising firms. When the political unrest broke out in the early 2000s, the decampment of multinational advertising agencies to Dakar or Accra created the space for the emergence of an indigenous advertising industry, which is now well into its second decade of development. Growing in both…
While Côte d’Ivoire’s offshore oil basin has attracted foreign players since the early 1970s, a lack of sizeable findings and rising production costs led to a slump in activity from the late 1980s onwards. This changed at the turn of the millennium when enhanced oil recovery techniques and the prominence of the Gulf of Guinea’s sedimentary basin in other areas, such as Equatorial Guinea and…
Despite underinvestment due to the country’s civil unrest, Côte d’Ivoire’s power infrastructure is well developed by regional standards and is of strategic importance to several nearby countries. The country’s first cross-border connection was established in 1994 with its eastern neighbour Ghana. While exchanges between the two nations have been modest since, it marked the start of regional…
Economic growth of 8.8% in 2013, an estimate of around 9% for 2014 and a forecast of nearly 8% for 2015 are all testaments to the robust recovery under way in Côte d’Ivoire. However, this success has also brought deficiencies in energy supplies to the fore. Rising household consumption and industrial activity has seen demand for power grow by an average of 10% in recent years, and with the mining…
