Only 1 year after the liberalisation of the European aviation industry was agreed, the Yamoussoukro Declaration was signed in 1988 to great fanfare. A decision to liberalise the African aviation industry, to drive economic progression through increased trade, an opportunity to raise their people out of poverty. The unification of that endless African sky. Reinforced by the Yamoussoukro Decision of 1999 this was a grand vision. A statement of intent. And then…..nothing.
Yamoussoukro is itself a grand vision. The home village of Président Félix Houphouët-Boigny, he built it into his capital city. Wide European-style boulevards. Grand buildings in his honour. La Fondation de la Paix, L’Hôtel Président, La Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix. Three grand buildings with his initials. Three grand buildings designed to dwarf their European counterparts. Three grand buildings that cost billions of francs. While his people lived in abject poverty. The all-too-common grandiose ambitions of dictators detached from reality.
Whether FAB was a dictator or not depends on who you speak to. He still has many fans in Ivory Coast. As first president of an independent republic he will always hold a piece of history, of Ivorian hearts.
But there were definitely signs of despotic tendencies. A single party ‘democracy’. Restrictions on freedom of the press. Dissenters jailed or executed.
Or perhaps fed to the crocodiles (along with the Albinos, of which there are a surprisingly large number in Ivory Coast). In the lake next to the Presidential palace (another grand building. No initials.) live a bask of crocodiles given military titles – capitaine, commandant and chef du cabinet. Once they protected the president from dissent, opposition and, you could argue, reality. These days they live off chickens and the unlucky tourist.
Yamoussoukro today is a shadow of that grand vision. The wide boulevards have reduced to dusty, chaotic thoroughfares. The women still troop to the market to sit in the sun all day hoping to make enough money to put food on the (non-existent) table. The children use old flour bags as satchels. If they go to school at all. A grand vision left to decay.
Thirty years later African open skies are finally becoming reality. Under the not-so-snappy name of the Single African Air Transport Market, 32 of the 54 African countries are in the process of liberalising their skies. A grand vision left to decay, now being resurrected as a sign of optimism for African aviation and economic prosperity.
Let’s hope that Yamoussoukro itself, and many other similar cities across this amazing continent, can resurrect the grand vision. To bring about the unfulfilled potential of the country, the continent and its people, forever optimistic about the future.