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But the Gallic lamina is thin. The Ivory Coast's population, 13 million, consists of 80 ethnic groups, each of which speaks a different dialect. The miracle country is growing somewhat threadbare. Throughout most of the 1970s, the Ivory Coast enjoyed annual economic-growth rates of 6% to 7%, the most vibrant in former French West Africa. The trend has reversed since coffee and cocoa prices collapsed in the 1980s. High oil prices mean a gallon of gasoline sells at $5. From 1986 to 1989, export earnings dropped from $3.2 billion to $2.5 billion, while costs continued to rise. Total debt, $12 billion, rose from 37% of gross domestic product in 1979 to 130% in 1991, effectively crowding out the private sector's ability to tap into domestic credit sources. "They mortgaged their soul to the West," says a diplomat. Now, with an integrated European market about to become reality, the attention of French businessmen is being distracted away from Africa. And a unified European Community may force Paris to adopt a Europe-first policy, denying the Ivory Coast its privileged position within France.
Billboards picturing Houphouet-Boigny, 86, are everywhere. They show Le Vieux in a charcoal-gray leisure suit surrounded by enthusiastic young Ivory Coasters, the camera angle chosen to make the tiny President look as tall as everyone else. Houphouet is regarded as a master politician. Says a Western diplomat: "When the Ivory Coast won a regional soccer game, everyone was convinced it was because Houphouet managed to buy off the other teams. They feel he is capable of anything."
But Le Vieux, many Ivory Coasters believe, is surrounded by corrupt advisers. Although his policies helped make the country richer than its neighbors, he also stripped his government of credible economic alternatives and virtually guaranteed that the politicians who come after him will not be able to sustain the prosperity.
One symbol of the Ivory Coast's profound cultural disjunction is a huge edifice that rises from flat green fields at Yamoussoukro, Houphouet's native village: the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, which cost some $175 million, a gesture of lifeless grandiosity. Amid the grazing goats and the lagoons, the basilica looks like an ill-shapen mushroom, massive from a distance and strangely sterile up close. Ismail Serageldin, director of the technical department at the World Bank, observed during a recent Cairo lecture dealing with culture shock that there were "certain symbols of a society dissociated from its own people." The most spectacular of all, said Serageldin, "may be the basilica in the Ivory Coast. In all the mosaics, the only black person is the portrait of the President." Yet a young local woman asks a Westerner, "Do you think a poor country like this shouldn't have the right to something that grand?"
Houphouet-Boigny is old. Forty-three percent of his country's population is age 15 or younger, and most are uneducated. Last year university students rioted, and an elite military assault team attacked their dormitories. The army sees the students as pampered rich kids. Class differences are rising. The future may belong to the educated young -- or it could be dictated by the embittered, uneducated masses from which the army and the gendarmerie draw their recruits. As elsewhere in Africa, there are two deadly races: economic growth against population, and basic education against ignorance.