The dossier

Posted on January 18, 2013 by admin

Entrepreneurship is not well taught in the Ivorian education system. But you’ll meet many people with business ideas. The problem seems to be the implementation. After spending a small amount of time in Abidjan you’ll meet a certain character that many people will quickly recognise – the sad-faced Monsieur Dossier. In fact, I find them in the Ivorian community in Dubai as well.

Mr X has a business idea. In fact it’s the  best business idea ever – it could only succeed (you don’t dare tell him otherwise). The idea is not just written in his head. Oh no, he has it under his arm – typed up on paper. And to show you how serious it is, it also has a handfull of associated official papers, and stamped sheets showing how it has been submitted to many different authorities.

Ah, but here is the rub. These big people show bad faith towards the idea. They are very complementary in person, but then they don’t return calls and don’t write back as promised. Photocopies of the dossier have been dropped off at various ministries and organisations but without success.

And so Mr X, our Ivorian entrepreneur, has a sad face. He feels the weight of an enormous moral injustice, that his great idea (that could only succeed) is being neglected by those who could make it a success. “Ils sont mechants” (they are bad/naughty/wicked).

The belief, widely held and unchallenged by the dossier brigade, is that the big people’s job is to throw their money at untested ideas by untested people. They don’t need to invest any money in their own project or perhaps even start the project with what (little) they have. Instead, they are entirely at the mercy of the big people – a passive victim of unfair people. Dare I say, it’s very francophone.

Don’t ask these people the following questions:

- are you sure your idea will work?

- why don’t you start the project with what you can rather than thinking you need to start big?

- do you really know anything about the sector you’re hoping to work in?

- why don’t you try getting money from people/customers rather than institutions, and especially government?

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Where to live in Abidjan?

Posted on January 13, 2013 by admin

Perhaps I’m feeling inspired answering questions from my replacement who is about to move to Abidjan, but this is something I’ve been asked about a few times. I saw something on Facebook that is quite useful, which I’ll translate for you:

“Advice for tourists coming to Beautiful Babi: Cocody = Beverly Hills (the bourgeois), Plateau = Manhattan (skyscrapers), Marcory = Las Vegas (the place that never sleeps), Treichville = Kingston (drugs in the streets), Kousmassi = Bogota (gangland), Port Bouet = Hawaii (coconuts and palms), Adjame = Texas (urban jungle), Attecoube = Bronx (the strongest make the law), Yopougon = Rio de Janeiro (alcohol, sex, party, beautiful girls), Abobo = Baghdad (danger everywhere).”

As a joke-y summary, it’s not a bad for giving you a flavour of all Abidjan’s communes. It makes the place sound a lot more dangerous or glamorous that it really is, but it’s a good rule of thumb for beginners.

Writing as I am in English, I assume I’m addressing an international crowd, in this case arriving for a new posting in Abidjan. With that in mind, there are probably only three districts (quartiers) for you – Cocody, Plateau and Marcory. I’ve blogged earlier about my thoughts about Marcory, or more precisely the Zone 4/Bietry area where many French people choose to live. It has lots of good quality restaurants, bars and nightclubs but there’s not much else and it’s not a particularly pleasant environment unless you need to be close to the airport, or the beach resorts to the east.

Plateau is in the very centre of the city and as the commercial area is very quiet outside of office hours, though it has a range of good old-school restaurants and places to hang out if you know where to look. Good for expat apartments and being central – many UN folk at the peacekeeping mission live here.

Finally, most internationals will probably go for Cocody, so I want to spend most of my time talking about this area. The commune includes a large number of areas and often ‘Cocody’ is more particularly applied to the original Cocody zone centred on the St Jean roundabout, the university campus and the diplomatic quarter. II Plateau is slightly to the north with a lot of evening life focused on Rue des Jardins. Further north is 7eme tranche which has some decent and slightly cheaper options (than II Plateaux) and finally at the end of the Boulevard Latrille you get Angre which has decent Middle class homes but is rather far from the rest of the city.

The other way you can travel in Cocody is east towards Bingerville. After the campus you get Riviera which has many parts – Riviera Golf/Jardins being the first part you come to, which is a pleasant area to live. Riviera III is a bit further out, and Palmarie again some. Riviera III, particularly around the French Lycée Blaise Pascal school, has Abidjan’s best accommodation, though you need to think about where you’ll travel to each day for work – there are only two options for getting to the rest of the city – the wide Bingerville road and the narrow road that goes by the diplomatic zone to old Cocody. Once the third bridge and associated roadworks are finished, circulation should be considerably improved.

I sometimes wonder about my dream area; probably II Plateaux or Riviera III. The latter if you want to be in the most luxurious area, the former if you want to be at the centre of Ivorian bourgeois cultural life, but which can be a bit too close to Abobo for comfort.

I have friends and family who live in all corners of the city and all have their charms and are worth a visit. Abobo and Yopougon are stimulating places that are really cities within the city and the sense of life at all times of day, especially night, is a spectacle.

For alternative living options, special mention needs to be made for Blockoss, an urban ‘village’ which backs on to the St Jean and diplomatic areas. It is basically in Cocody (though I don’t think technically), and has cheaper accommodation in a small but vibrant community beside the lagoon. I have several friends who left upperclass Abidjan for the atmosphere here, so it does come recommended. I have a Canadian friend who got a very interesting place in Adjame that helped him get a real insight into local culture, and some friends who used to live in Treichville. I have a secret dream of keeping a studio in these places and splitting my time between two homes – with the studio just to breathe in the vivacity of these districts.

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Leaving the ex-pat bubble in Ivory Coast 2/2

Posted on January 12, 2013 by admin

After a little delay, here’s the follow-up post to last month’s first part of my little guide on how to leave the ex-pat bubble in Ivory Coast. The first part gave some advice on how to find out more about Ivorian society and culture. This half will look at meeting Ivorians.

In most countries (except perhaps the UAE where I am now), coming across nationals is not particularly difficult. However, forming genuine relationships tends to be tricky. I was recently at the Village Market shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, where they have a large food hall with cuisine from all over the world. It’s a cosmopolitan place in terms of food and people, but the tables were almost entirely mono-national – Kenyans, Somalis, Brits, Asians, Russians – all were sitting with their own people (my table was the exception, I was with a Japanese friend). It reminded me of an obvious truth – that we feel most comfortable with people from our own cultural group.

But, the rewards of moving out of this group can be tremendous – you’ll generally have to adapt a little yourself, but you can grow a huge amount as a person and pick the best bits from a new culture, that in some areas may have a better strategy for life than your own. However, as I mentioned last time, ex-pats who want to move out of their circles, often feel the barriers are insurmountable. So, here are a few tips.

To begin with, I’d say that although you may be struck by the exotic appearance of the place on the journey from the airport, there are a good number of Ivorians in the city who share similarities with you – similar education, similar languages, similar interests, similar ages, and yes, even similar incomes.

1. “People are only after my money” – if you have a standard Western income then you will almost certainly be struck by the fact that you have suddenly become part of an elite rich class in a place with a lot of people who don’t earn 1% of what you do. This is likely to be something that’s forefront in your mind when you meet Ivorians, and it causes some people to retreat to expat enclaves. No-one likes being seen as a walking ATM and sadly that is the view of some. Let me say a few things on this about this;

  • Don’t be a sucker (gaou) – try to avoid obviously exploitative relationships
  • Don’t be afraid to say no – many people are just trying it on, and you can laugh it off with a smile
  • Money plays a bigger role in relationships in Ivory Coast than in the West – ordinary richer Ivorians are involved in far more social financial transactions than perhaps you are comfortable with – small loans, the richer party picking up restaurant tabs, etc.. Without wanting to exaggerate or get into exploitative relationships, it is in some sense the richer persons’ role and honour to pay more

2. Income differences Try not to let your likely higher level of disposable income become too great a barrier. In genuine relationships, poorer Ivorians may feel a sense of shame about not people able to contribute much financially. Perhaps your Ivorian friends will be far from comfortable splitting the bill at Montparnasse restaurant with you – either because it’s too expensive for them, or because they have a different sense of how resources should be used. They may find it painful to spend 30-40,000 cfa on a night out when relatives are at the door asking for help with medical bills or schooling. Let’s be honest – frequently as an expat you are being ripped off, but you just don’t know it, and your Ivorian friends do (try taking an Ivorian friend to dinner at the Novotel hotel restaurant and see what happens; “two dry chicken wings for 9,000 cfa!”). So, be open to cheaper forms of socialising – and certainly maquis are great places for all nationalities, serve amazing food, and are more affordable (even if you pick up the entire bill).

3. “I have no problem making connections, but my ‘friends’ are annoying me”. If you’re open to Ivorian friendships, you’ll probably have no shortage of people asking for your number and calling you up – possibly just for a ‘bonjour’. This is socially normal though you may find it bizarre that people call just to say hello. I did develop a strategy not to reply to ‘beepers’ – people who call and hang-up so you call back. My feeling was that if people are genuinely interested in your friendship, they will be ready to pay to call you, and I found that relationships with people who beep never went very far.

4. “I was lucky enough to get an invite to an Ivorian party, but no-one talked to me.” The majority of Ivorians – even those that can afford to – don’t go to bars and clubs, even if these are popular social places for expats. There’s a certain negativity in the culture towards such places. Instead, a lot of Ivorian ‘socializing’ takes place at family gatherings; large meals for religious events, weddings and funerals etc. Let me say though that I’d probably avoid these, at least after checking them out a few times. I’ll say one thing for ex-pats – they have great parties – everyone moves around, chats, meets new people, etc. Ivorians don’t really have a decent equivalent – they tend to be more formal and people are more concerned with how they appear than reaching out. It’s considered perfectly normal for you to go to an Ivorian ‘fete’ and just talk to the people you came with, wait hours for bad food, and then go home. Frequently Ivorians will be watching everyone else eagerly and making sarcastic comments to the friends they came with about how someone is dressed, a particular couple, or how badly organised everything is. Decent fun if you came with a good crowd, but rarely too interesting.

So, a little more positively, here’s what would I suggest.

  • Spend time getting to know Ivorian culture and society as recommended in the first post, and of course improve your language skills.
  • The maquis (or perhaps shwarma joint) is probably THE venue for meeting and socialising with Ivorian friends.
  • At parties organised by your international friends, you’ll probably meet Ivorians who are very close to you in terms of interests, comfortable bridging the divide to international cultures and gate-keepers to other Ivorian friendships and cultural experiences. Look out for Ivorians at these events who look uncomfortable – often they are just a bit nervous and waiting for someone to talk to them – a great opportunity.
  • Get out of your house to events and places where you can meet a good mix of people (but not nightclubs) – religious associations, sports groups (e.g. the hash), interest groups (web, arts, etc), events (concerts, art expos, seminars etc).
  • Take advantage of opportunities with Ivorians at work – these people will be used to internationals (like you) and will at least be people with a steady income which can help some of the problems above.
  • The web is your best tool.

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A final note on romantic relationships, which if they work out are without doubt the best way to open up local contacts, language skills and friendships. Let me put it bluntly – if you have a Western passport, a Western income and speak a small amount of French, getting an attractive boyfriend or girlfriend is not going to be difficult. This may be enough for some – and it is for many. It’s not my job to preach (though I do want to strongly object to those who use their financial power to use and abuse Ivorian partners). But let me say that certainly in the more extreme examples of age and beauty, the Ivorian partner is often unhappy and in the relationship for material reasons. I say this from often spending time at parties with the Ivorian side of such couples or at least getting the gossip from my wife afterwards.

In pop culture, there are plenty of stories about Ivorian girlfriends having multiple partners – perhaps a rich older guy for material reasons and someone else more their age for love. While I know of examples and such stories are popular, I wouldn’t say this is the norm, and it is far more common to see Ivorian men with multiple Ivorian partners (perhaps a wife and a mistress) than the other way around. Have your eyes open though.

So, my recommendation would be to tread with caution, but by no means close off the possibilities. To enter into a loving relationship, I’d recommend avoiding romantic relationships with people you meet in bars and clubs. Use the above networks to meet people who whom you share interests – from work or interest groups. Spend time getting to know partners before committing – and here in Ivory Coast I’d recommend getting to know the family as well. The wider family can be the downfall of even the best relationships if the in-laws are constantly intruding on your home life and asking for things. Several adapt the rule ‘no inlaws living with us’, which is probably recommended. Without wanting to stereotype, some ethnic groups are known to be worse than others for this. You’ll generally be safer with a middle / upper class family, and in some cases may find your partners family is wealthier than your own.

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To conclude, make the effort and you should be rewarded. The wide use of French means relationships are far easier for Westerners than in many other countries, even officially francophone ones. Ivorians are very open and hospitable, rarely reticent about sharing contacts and in many settings you can strike up conversations with complete strangers and quickly develop friendships especially if you’re around for a while.

Anyway, I hope some of these comments were useful, and feel free to add your own tips or questions below.

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Perhaps I should have entitled this post ‘Leaving the ex-pat bubble in Africa’ to get more traffic. However, when others say ‘Africa’ they usually mean ‘the country I live in’ and I can’t say with any confidence that I know about ‘Africa’ – the term is too vast (cf. Kapuscinski).

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

In praise of…Meiway

Posted on January 2, 2013 by admin

As I listen to Ivorian artist Meiway’s M20 album in my studio flat, it’s hard not to reflect on one of Ivory Coast’s most unique musicians. In fact when you talk about Ivorian music you generally talk about three types of music (zouglou, coupe decale and reggae) and then say Meiway (or perhaps ‘zoblazo’, a genre with only one major artist in it, Meiway, who invented it). This is a guy in his 50s who still looks like his was 30. And he’s an incredible musician – an increasingly rare breed in the world of samples or rehashed Marley.

But I think above all, he stands out as a remarkable individual, and probably the nicest guy in Ivorian showbiz. I did a long interview with him when his M20 album came out (he speaks great English) and near the end he said ‘hang on, I’m sure I’m seen you before’. He promptly remembered me posing a single question in a press conference in 2007 in Brazzaville.

The last I saw him was during the Ivorian crisis just before the war reignited. I was walking near the office and he picked me up and took me to my destination. He’d been to the blockaded Golf hotel a few days before to meet the Ouattara government. It was a dangerous thing to do considering the recently-elected Ouattara didn’t control much beyond the grounds of the hotel. Meiway’s mum was scared, but he felt it was just the right thing to do.

Over the weekend he performed at the shambolic-ally organised Kora awards in Abidjan. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid to bring international stars, especially Chris Brown, to Abidjan, who then promptly didn’t perform at all. A huge slap in the face for local artists, as Meiway said quite clearly in the show concert.

My biggest Meiway moment will perhaps always be when when of his early tracks was played at my wedding and the traditional paper handkerchiefs came out as people danced in a long line around the garden.

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West African stock markets

Posted on January 1, 2013 by admin

I was recently chatting to a very wealthy British friend and I happened to mention the West African stock market based in Abidjan (BRVM). He didn’t realise such a thing existed. I suspect it’s not the easiest thing to access from overseas but locally it’s pretty straightforward – you set up an account with a local bank which has an investment arm, and then you go through them to purchase shares and bonds.

I started just after the recent crisis with admittedly small sums, but so far the investment looks good. With dividends reinvested and costs taken off – in the second half of 2011 my portfolio was up 17.8%, then 27.2% in 2012. Those don’t seem like bad returns to me especially given the stagnation of many markets around the world. You can track share prices online at the end of each day’s trade, and although the prices don’t seem too reactive to broader economic news, the trend so far is upwards. My bank’s brokers don’t seem particularly reactive – I’m not sure they’ve made a trade in the last five months, but anyway, I take a hands-off approach to the portfolio and I’m happy with the results.

I don’t think there’s much written about the market in English, so here’s my small contribution. Most of the companies are Ivorian, although Senegal’s telecom company Sonatel is by far the largest. For those wanting to invest in Africa’s strong economic growth rates but lacking the stomach for the high levels of risk around personal business projects, the stock market seems to represent a reasonably secure way to invest with a minimum of hassle. And with the CFA tied to the Euro, there is at least a greater degree of security with regards to currency fluctuations.

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Leaving the ex-pat bubble in Ivory Coast 1/2

Posted on December 29, 2012 by admin

As I reflect on five years in Ivory Coast/Cote d’Ivoire (more details to come in a later post), I thought I might try and pass on some advice for expats coming to live in Abidjan. While we all feel at home in our own cultural group, most people enjoy working in new countries because they want a new experience – hanging out with people from back home after all, was easy enough back home. Beyond that, any expat who stays anywhere for more than two years knows that after a while you find yourself going to one leaving party after the next and before you know it, your ‘generation’ has left, to be replaced by a new group ‘discovering’ the place for the first time, a ritual you’ve already been through. Finally, at some of these leaving parties you may look around and realise that there are almost no Ivorians present, which you might think is a bit of a shame for anyone after several years in a country.

Having said all that, the spirit is often willing, but the ‘how to’ bit is trickier. So, over the next two blog posts I’ll be trying to give a bit of advice. Firstly, how to find out more about Ivorian society and culture, and then how to make Ivorian friends.

1. Music

Music is a key part of Ivorian life – and is perhaps the principal form of mass media. While Ivorians listen to imported music (something you don’t always find across the continent), home-grown music is far and away the most popular. The three main types are reggae, zouglou and coupe decale. The latter is probably what you’ll come across first – and it’s the newest. It’s the loud fast electronic music you hear playing in a lot of bars, clubs and maquis. At first you might take it as ‘white noise’, but you’ll probably soon be tapping your foot. Most of these songs come and go very quickly and have a related dance, that everyone from 2-30 years old quickly grasps.

Reggae music includes big local stars like Tiken Jah Fakoly and Alpha Blondy. Live music isn’t particularly common in Abidjan, but reggae is the genre most often performed live. Parker Place is well known in the ex-pat community.

Finally, there’s zouglou which perhaps is the music from that will most open a door to local culture and worldviews. Coupe decale doesn’t have much in terms of lyrics, while reggae can be instructive though it often takes broader global or continental themes. Zouglou will tell you a story, often with local expressions and language, and full of Ivorian humour. You’ll probably find colleagues more than happy to explain what the songs are saying. Magic System are the most famous group, though a lot of their modern hit singles are not lyrically strong as they are rather bland offerings for the European market – investigate the album tracks though.

Finally, a few other musical genres that you might come across – Malinke singers similar to the music you find in Mali and Senegal sometimes organise concerts, particularly around Islamic festivals. Then there’s Meiway who has a category of his own (zoblazo) and is worth hearing in concert. Finally, if there is one artist you should listen to it is rapper Billy Billy. If you can follow his lyrics you’ll have made a huge step towards understanding how things work.

2. Comic books

This gets its own category because I couldn’t write this blog post without mentioning Aya de Yopougon, a successful comic book that charts the life of a teenage girl growing up in 1970s Yopougon (a western suburb of Abidjan). It’s probably the best and most accessible entry into Ivorian culture and even includes a glossary of local slang. Full of humour and beautifully illustrated, this is a real must if you want to even scratch the surface. I know they have been translated, but do try to get this in French so you can become familiar with the expressions that will open up the language of the street.

3. Books

I’m not quite sure what to put in this category and can only make a few suggestions. If you spend much time in Abidjan, you’ll notice that Ivorians are not big readers. Many will have had to read the Ivorian classics (Kourouma / Kone) in school as set-texts and these are worth getting hold of. I haven’t come across any fantastic modern books. Many recommend Robert et les Catipilla by Venance Konan as a good way to understand the Ivorian crisis in story form. For non-fiction, many recommend Christian Bouquet’s Geopolitique de la Cote d’Ivoire as the book on the crisis. In English you are seriously limited to the admitedly excellent if academic Making War in Cote d’Ivoire.

4. News media

The press is not particularly well developed in Ivory Coast even if there is basic media freedom, and most Ivorians depend on non-traditional or non-indigenous sources of news. Fraternite Matin (Frat Mat) is the highest selling newspaper and the government paper, and it has the resources to produce the country’s highest-quality paper, even if it clearly adopts a pro-government slant. Unless you’re desperately keen to get into local politics, you’re probably best just picking up the main stories on the abidjan.net website and particularly reading the newspaper frontpages, which appear here. Although many Ivorians don’t buy newspapers, the frontpages do get well read at points in the city where they are pinned on the wall. The people you see in small crowds observing the frontpages are called ‘Titrologues’. You do at least get a good spread of the different opinions by reading the frontpages, even if the headlines are frequently misleading. Outside the daily newspapers, the weekly comic newspaper Gbich is an excellent introduction to Ivorian humour.

5. Others

A few other stops are worth making on your journey to understand Ivorian culture and society. The state television RTI is unwatchable most of the time, but if people do tune in it tends to be for the evening news at 20h00 (or the Brazilian soap just before). Sometimes you can catch locally produced TV series – and if you are lucky you’ll stumble across something with comic actor Michel Gohou (otherwise watch on Youtube). Magazine-wise, check out the Vodoo titles – Life magazine and Tycoon, again just to get a feel of things and what’s out there. And finally, perhaps your best resource is the web. On Twitter, check out the hashtags #civ, #kpakpatoya. There’s a lively community on Facebook and in Ivory Coast people don’t generally limit their networks to ‘people they know’. The blogging community is growing stronger – many are regrouped on the civblogs platform.

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Of course there’s no substitute for actually meeting Ivorians, and that’s where I’ll turn to in the second half of this post.

Posted in Culture | 2 Comments

Ivory Coast divorce over mariage law

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

It made for a great title for the BBC article, but I must admit the dissolution of the Ivorian government has me a little confused. A lot of that is because I haven’t been in the country since Saturday. What’s behind the dissolution? The way the news reports are written, you’d think that ideology and policy debate had suddenly crept back into Ivorian politics (I hardly remember seeing them there before). I’d love to know the back story, but I really struggle to believe the official version that it’s a fall out over the ‘equal rights for women’ issue. For a start, there’s very little difference in terms of policy between the parties in the coalition. There’s been rumours of a reshuffle for weeks, and this seems to be either a straw breaking the proverbial back, or perhaps (more likely I think) an excuse to justify a dissolution. If the coalition partners did vote against it, I suspect it would be because something about the manner in which it was proposed rubbed them the wrong way, rather than the issue itself. Either way, Ouattara’s probably locked up the female vote for 2015.

What’s next? Ouattara always seemed to have a plan of a large inclusive political government followed by a streamlined technocratic cabinet, and that may be the outcome. The PM Jeannot Ahoussou has struggled to make a mark, though there are no obvious replacements.

*I guess I wasn’t surprised not to see any articles in the Conservative Right in the US headlined ‘Muslim president dissolves government who refuse equal rights for women’.

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Crocodile teeth and ivory towers

Posted on September 11, 2012 by admin

I was at an ex-pat party at the weekend. Very enjoyable conversation even if my contact with this particular community has fallen drastically in recent years. Near the end of the evening, the conversation turned to Dicko, the keeper of the sacred crocodiles in Yamousosukro, who met a grisly end several weeks ago. To my great surprise though, almost no-one had heard of the incident.

I was a little taken a back. The story had been on the front pages of virtually every Ivorian newspaper, it dominated blogs, facebook (especially the youtube videos of the event) and twitter. There were three tv reports on the nightly Ivorian news including an interview with the governor of the capital city. The incident has even given rise to a local expression ‘as ungrateful as the crocodiles in Yamoussoukro’, who of course literally bit the hand that had fed them for several decades. It was without doubt one of the main topics of conversation among Ivorians during August.

And yet, I suddenly found a group of well connected and intelligent people, living in Abidjan, who hadn’t heard the story. It made me wonder how well informed humanitarian actors really are about life here – how close are they to Ivorian matters if such a major event escaped their notice? If you’d asked what the party-goers thought about Michelle Obama’s convention speech or the last episode of House they’d probably all have an opinion.

Posted in Culture | 5 Comments

Nigerian and Ghanaian takeover

Posted on August 28, 2012 by admin

A friend came back from her holiday yesterday and asked me what she’d missed during August in Ivory Coast. The predictable answer was ‘fresh gun battles’, but I was tempted to say ‘an anglophone West African cultural attack’. Things started with a P-square concert a couple of years ago, but it took speed earlier this year with Flavour’s hit single and in the last two months it’s really flowered. Ghanaian and Nigerian music is everywhere. I’ve put a few posters for up and coming events below; I’m tempted to say there are more big name concerts with West African anglophones in Abidjan than Ivorians in the coming months (even if like Chidinma this weekend, the artists only perform three songs to an audience that had paid $20 for the concert!). Coupe Decale has well and truly been knocked off its perch, even in the clubs, bars and maquis.

Of course fashions come and go, but I think there are clear reasons why Abidjan’s once proud music scene is no longer the ‘in’ thing. Firstly, a little on the Ivorian music scene, which has three broad strands; reggae (Alpha Blondy, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Ismael Isaac), zouglou (Magic System, Espoir 2000, The Garagistes) and coupe decale (DJ Arafat, DJ Lewis, Bebi Philippe, Serge Beynaud). The latter is the newest and was the king of the jungle for the past few years. And yet, however fast and furious the beat was, there was a lot of showmanship trying to hide a real paucity of talent. Many of the leading artists can’t sing (and of course almost none sing live during performances). There was a lot of sampling and very little musicality. Even the bits that sounded like rapping, were nonsense made to sound like words – they simply didn’t have anything to say, or perhaps the ability to say it. Then there are the music videos – cheap, poorly produced, and rarely good enough to get a place on the top African music platforms like Trace and MTV.

Then there are the artists, the leading one being DJ Arafat. Yes, he is the classic rock and roll bad boy, but in successful artists this sense of ‘showmanship’ is usually combined with business acumen – giving the right interviews, showing up for concerts, not cheesing everyone off. It looked like the whole thing went to their heads.

In many ways, coupe decale was a lost opportunity for Ivory Coast. It’s dancing was just as inventive as Azonto – but the country just did a very bad job of exporting the product. Perhaps the most surprising indicator of the times is the front cover of ‘Flash Afrik’ this week, which asks with resignation: “Are Nigeria women the most beautiful?”

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“Drogba’s family attacked” tweets

Posted on August 22, 2012 by admin

I’m noticing an interesting thing on Twitter. Practically every day now in my twitter stream I see the following tweet:

“FOOTBALL star Didier Drogba’s family have been attacked by rebel fighters in the Ivory Coast, it was claimed last night.”

I’ve seen this regularly for several months now. It appears on twitter accounts without much of a following (newly started) and never directly concerned with Ivorian affairs.

I’m intrigued. What can we say about it? It seems to be what Ivorians call ‘intox’, defined as ‘things not true but spread to harm / support one political side in the Ivorian political divide’.

I can only think of two explanations for the tweet, the latter being the most probable. Firstly it could be the simple repetition of a tweet that was once true – this would date from late March 2011/early April 2012 when forces supporting opposition leader Alassane Ouattara drove out the former head of state, Laurent Gbagbo, widely considered to have lost the 2010 presidential elections. In the eyes of many Gbagbo supporters, these pro-Ouattara forces were ‘rebels’. Drogba comes from the same ethnic group as Gbagbo and this community feared reprisals, and indeed saw some (though in the end far fewer than other ethnic groups). By several accounts, Drogba’s Dad’s house in the village was looted and possibly burned though I haven’t visited there myself and when I spoke to him recently I forgot to ask.

Is this simply an old tweet that continues to do the rounds because Drogba is such a well-known figure? My suspicion is not and this leads me to what I think is the most probably explanation, which is that this is part of a deliberate campaign to spread something that will make Ivory Coast sound like a dangerous and unruly place. I’m led to believe this because;

i) the tweet is almost never re-tweeted – it doesn’t seem to capture many people’s attention (especially Ivorian’s attention) so it’s odd that it continues to get tweeted by accounts that seem to show no other interest in Drogba, football or Ivory Coast.

ii) it doesn’t look like a regular tweet from this time – it has no hashtag, no source, no identifiable original tweeter from within the regular community of tweeters interested in Ivory Coast (and we all kind of know each other)

iii) it appears regularly from accounts that seem to have nothing to do with Ivory Coast

iv) it seems to be deliberately ambiguous - ‘it was claimed’, ‘last night’

It’s the sort of thing that could easily trip up a sports journalist that doesn’t know much about Ivory Coast, let alone Drogba’s village (Guiberoua) and I suspect that is the aim. I don’t really have the time but perhaps it would be fairly interesting to do a more detailed study of this tweet. Where did it a originally come from? How often is it tweeted? What can we say about the accounts that post this? Are these fake accounts by companies who can do this sort of drip-drip campaign? Or even unsuspecting Drogba fans?

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