Lessons

The Hong Kong of Africa?

Bouake, the second largest metropolis in the Ivory Coast, seems to be 180° out of phase with ussens. Sigh. Bouake is the ex-rebel capital of "Soroland", as the zone is sometimes nicknamed, after the New Forces leader, Guillaume Soro....Soroland may not be a breakaway zone, but for seven years the inhabitants of this zone have got used to living without government taxes, customs charges and even water and electricity bills.... Hussein Doumbia is one of many local business leaders who have learnt to profit from this vast black market zone. "Things are a lot cheaper than in the south - we see that people from the south often come here to stock up, above all the military who come for all their electronics - mobile phones, DVDs, televisions, everything," he says. When civil servants fled south, volunteer teachers, like Ali Ouattara, stepped forward to try to keep things going. "We didn't want the kids to become child soldiers, so we tried to give them something. This is how we became teachers," says Mr Ouattara, who lost his job at the university at the start of the crisis.... Gradually with contributions from parents, the ad-hoc schools helped save a generation of children, and in some years the rebel zone got better results in national exams than the government zone. Other volunteers helped cover for the absence of the state in other ways: setting up an ad-hoc postal service; their own television stations and some basic policing. [Reason] ”