Central market in former rebel territory

It's ten in the morning, and the sun is blazing over Bouaké, the former rebel capital – today the Ivory Coast’s second biggest city. In the streets, the horns of the motorcycle taxis and cars are deafening. However, the noise abates once you get into the alleyways of the big market in the Dougouba district, where men soaked in sweat huff and puff without uttering a word as they unload sacks full of tubers such as cassava and yam, or banana plants, from lorries.

Bouaké’s central market is to the Ivory Coast what the big market at Les Halles in Paris is to France. It's from here that the country is supposed to be supplied with food. The market in Bouaké stretches across 28 hectares and has 370 storage rooms, most of which belong to cooperatives – the cooperative for agricultural goods and the cooperative of buyers of agricultural products. Traders even come from neighbouring Liberia to buy pepper, while peanuts from Guinea are traded, and onion sellers travel from Burkina Faso and Niger – though not to the extent that the people would hope for, or that the city and state government would like.

A divided country

The market was established in 1998, when the people looked forward optimistically to the future development of the Ivory Coast – but four years later civil war broke out and divided the country into two for ten years. Bouaké was ruled by the rebels from the north. Sales at the central market collapsed as traders from the south of the country, still under the control of the Government, stayed away. Over the years, new distribution networks and markets became established.

In 2013, following the successful transition to democracy and the establishment of peace in the country, the market was reopened in the hope that it would be restored to its former glory.

However, that goal has still not been achieved. ‘The onion suppliers from Niger and Burkina Faso have found a way to sell their goods directly to the Ivorian towns and cities, and so they no longer go through the central market – because it was closed for so long,’ laments Coulibaly Mamadou, head of the market’s onion department.

The Government introduced a plan for the renovation of the storerooms and water pipes; and a cold store and a car wash for the lorries were to be built – but the traders and suppliers are still waiting for the plan to be implemented.

Back to everyday routines

There are also complaints from the traders of kola nuts – those bitter-tasting seeds containing caffeine and chewed by people in western Africa by way of an indulgence. From 45,000 baskets of kola nuts sold and exported to Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Mauritania before the civil war, sales are now down to just 5,000 baskets.

The neighbouring country, Guinea, benefited from the blockade of Bouaké’s central market – a consequence of the war – and politicians knew how to take advantage of the situation. Since then, traders there have been selling more kola nuts than ever, thanks also to their more relaxed export regulations.

What are we supposed to sell if no-one’s supplying?

And still the area of the market in Bouaké designated for plantains, fresh cassava and attiéké (a kind of couscous made from cassava) remains closed. Also the vegetable and grains departments still only have a few of the original forty storerooms in operation.

‘Taxes here are much too high as well,’ complains Ouattara Soumaila, President of the central market’s traders’ association. ‘The suppliers are staying away – so what are we supposed to sell if no-one’s supplying?’ Many of his colleagues have had too little work for years now, and they miss the more carefree times of the central market before the civil war.

Accurate statistics are difficult to obtain. During the civil war, the records were burnt. Yet, Amara Dao, the market’s Managing Director, estimates that the total turnover of goods today is a little higher than it was before the civil war, at just over 150,000 tonnes. Expectations for the development of the central market are high, but so far it hasn’t regained its key role as a supplier in western Africa.