EXPOSED: Côte d’Ivoire is Africa’s #2 IMF borrower and they want you to celebrate it as a “success story”
Let me break down what “success” actually looks like.
Côte d’Ivoire owes the IMF $4.8 billion. Only Egypt owes more. That is not independence, that is a payment plan with no end date.
They call it a “strong performer” because the cocoa keeps flowing and the debt keeps getting serviced. 6.2% growth sounds impressive until you realise most of that growth goes straight to foreign creditors.
The IMF program runs until September 2026, which means French trained technocrats are still deciding what Côte d’Ivoire can spend on. Schools, hospitals, roads, only if the IMF says yes.
“Fiscal discipline” is a nice phrase for telling a mother she cannot have free healthcare because the country has to pay back a loan that was used to pay back an older loan. That is not discipline, that is a treadmill.
The cocoa powerhouse label is the oldest trick in the colonial book. You grow the beans, you do the hard labour, you watch chocolate bars sell for $5 in Paris, and then you borrow $4.8 billion just to keep the lights on.
The same IMF that pats Côte d’Ivoire on the back imposes austerity on Ghana, cuts healthcare in Kenya, and demands fuel price hikes in Nigeria. Same institution, same script, different country.
Here is what they are planning next. More loans disguised as climate finance. More “resilience” programs that extend the debt timeline without reducing the principal. More African countries trapped in a cycle where borrowing becomes the only way to pay for basic services.
Debt is not development. Borrowing your way to “upper-middle income status” while foreign bankers hold the keys to your treasury is not sovereignty, it is a gilded cage.
The real success story would be an Africa that does not need the IMF at all. An Africa that trades in its own currency, industrialises its own cocoa, and tells the lenders to wait outside.
#FreeAfrica
Borrowing only make us slaves to the lender, always going back for more. African leaders are pocketing and making those close by rich at the expense of the we voters. No wonder nowadays every comedian is now thinking of being a politician.