Ivory Coast...I Used To Live There....

I was surprised to see this story on AP.

On the streets of this skyscraper-lined West African metropolis, tension and rumors of an imminent return to war are always thick in the air - and so too, is the sweet smell of chocolate. Despite more than half a decade of coups, fighting and failed peace deals, a $2 billion a year cocoa industry is a booming in Ivory Coast, producing more of the raw material for chocolate than any other country on the planet.

I am not sure what he is trying to say here since he is short on actual facts. Has the cocoa industry and the higher prices found its way to the people's pockets? I know that harvesting has been a problem since the nationalist President Gbagbo has verbally attacked all foreigners as the root of Ivory Coast's problems resulting in rampages and riots against immigrant workers. May of them have been driven out of the country or fled for their lives, resulting in some of the cocoa crops not being harvested.

We know that the Ivory Coast has been the largest producer of Cocoa for quite some time, but with the civil war and difficulties with a nationalist, dysfunctional and corrupt government, production is down and erratic. As a result, as with many commodities, prices are up and this may be helping the economy a little. Lets hope so since cocoa and coffee production there is done on small family and village farms that had in the past resulted in rising incomes for rural farm owners and workers.

But there are other problems, since the dysfunctional government and tensions have driven out aid and investment the economy must be hurting in many ways. The country lost the African Development Bank to politically stable Tunisia but picked up thousands of blue-helmeted UN soldiers that should keep the bars full and the prostitutes busy.