Côte d'Ivoire, the leading regional power in West Africa, aims to become an emerging country by 2020. To do this, it must reduce the poverty and inequality affecting its population and take all the necessary steps to promote youth employment. As a long-standing partner of Côte d'Ivoire, AFD supports it in carrying out key transitions for its future: demographic, social, energy, etc.

Produced by AFD's team of country-risk economists, country assessments provide an analysis of development processes in countries in which AFD operates. They also characterize their growth trajectory, and detect economic, social, political and financial vulnerabilities associated with these trajectories. AFD Group is thus in a position to properly measure the challenges and monitor the risks associated with each of its investments.

Emphasis is placed on developing countries, particularly in Africa, for which macroeconomic analyses are rare or infrequent. AFD seeks to complement existing production on the global economic situation, more focused on advanced economies and major emerging countries.

Find out more: Macroeconomic analyses at AFD

Country-risk analysis is based on a close follow-up over a long period of time and rooted in a fine knowledge of local contexts. Cyclical trends, often highlighted in the news, are always examined in the light of structural trends and of the regional context in which they take place. The aim is to highlight country-specific macroeconomic issues while assessing risks against comparable time- and space-based trajectories.

Country-risk economists place the study of socio-political vulnerabilities, the growth model, the viability of public debt, external balances and the soundness of the financial system at the heart of their assessment, and give specific attention to countries' exposure to climate risks.

Since emerging from its “lost decade” (2000-2010), Côte d'Ivoire has enjoyed strong economic growth (+7.2% since 2012). Resilient in the face of successive external shocks, it has confirmed its position within the WAEMU. A lower-middle-income country, it aspires to join the upper bracket by 2030. To achieve this, the economy, which is still largely based on commodity exports, faces a number of challenges, including restoring fiscal and external balance. Investment needs remain high to overcome persistent socio-economic fragilities and build an inclusive growth model. Despite good economic performance, the country remains vulnerable to political and security risks.

Our publications on Côte d'Ivoire's macroeconomic situation: 

• "Côte d’Ivoire: Macro-financial resilience and pursuit of an emerging ambition" in MacroDev n°60 (February 2025)
• "Race towards emergence challenged by shocks" in MacroDev Semestrial Panorama n°53 (February 2024)
• "Côte d’Ivoire: a relatively resilient economy", in MacroDev Semestrial Panorama n°36 (September 2021)
• "Debt sustainability in Africa: state of play and future challenges", MacroDev n°34 (May 2021)
• "Les enjeux de la nouvelle croissance ivoirienne" (October 2015, in French)

As part of its Digital Transition strategy (2021-2025), AFD has made three commitments:

• Offer everyone access to the Internet and its services;
• Put online essential services for each strategic transition;
• Putting the creation of innovative companies at the service of development.

In response, one of the three identified levers is to foster the governance of digital resources in the form of “common”. Digital commons refer to communities of rights holders who create and maintain, on a collaborative basis, databases, computer codes, digital tools, shared knowledge, literary and artistic creations. What we mean by “sub-Saharan African commons” refers to digital resources whose user or contributor communities are located in sub-Saharan Africa.

This research project is part of AFD’s “Commons” research signature programme.

The aim of the study was to identify the digital commons in sub-Saharan Africa, so as to produce a representative – if not exhaustive – map. The objective was to report on the extent of the phenomenon of digital commons in sub-Saharan Africa, by distinctly analyzing common content, data, software and common hardware shared or open plans and designs. It analysed how digital commons contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the challenges they face.

The service also analysed in more depth a selection of ten commons (African Storybook; AfricArXiv; AFRINIC; Energypedia; Grassroots Economics; Open MRS; Pamoja-Net; Ushahidi; WaziHub; Wikimedia Côte d'Ivoire), chosen for their representative nature, and proposed avenues for support by AFD.

Finally, the objective of the service was to create a community of interest around these issues through a collaborative approach.

The study was carried out in three phases:

• Collecting digital commons experiences in sub-Saharan Africa through a launch webinar and a collaborative platform;
• Research and census of digital commons at work or mobilized in sub-Saharan Africa through survey work. The research method used was mainly qualitative, through semi-directive interviews with identified African partners: common bearers, contributors, users and facilitators (public actors, private actors). Ten experiments were the subject of more in-depth analyses according to a defined maintenance framework.
• Presentation of research findings.

The study led to three main results:

• Production of an illustrated mapping and a proposal for taxonomy of digital commons in sub-Saharan Africa, following a literature search, workshops and interviews. It identifies 89 examples of digital commons with communities in sub-Saharan Africa. This collaborative mapping is available online (in French).
• Construction of a community (researchers, practitioners of the commons, institutional) interested in this subject, through the establishment of a collaborative approach.
• Analysis of illustrative cases of issues related to commons and opportunities for AFD to support them. These analyses gave rise to ten descriptive sheets of these commons.

Find out more about digital commons in Africa in the dedicated chapter of The Commons. Drivers of change and opportunities for Africa.

Five working hypotheses have been formulated:

• Hypothesis 1: African communities are very diverse and rarely identify themselves as commons.
• Hypothesis 2: Sub-Saharan African communities that participate in the development of commons are based first of all on a few committed citizens.
• Hypothesis 3: The sustainability of the identified commons depends heavily on their ability to mobilize international support.
• Hypothesis 4: The positive impact of access to global digital commons in sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly recognised.
• Hypothesis 5: The digital commons of sub-Saharan Africa participate in citizen struggles to decolonize knowledge and culture and support the local creation of value.

Read also: Digital Commons and Entrepreneurship: Alternative or Complementary Approaches?