Every time I take a walk in the deep country, I always come back with a lot of frustration, with this feeling of waste, this feeling that we hold priceless treasures of which we do not know the value, or that we do not know at all how to use them. For most Ivorians, our trips, when they are not professional or dictated by funerals, most often boil down to going to our villages. Going to visit other localities, just for discovery is not part of our customs. It is also true that the sad uniformity and lack of originality of our cities do not encourage many to go and discover them. What would we seek to discover in Adzopé, or Méagui, or Dimbokro? As long as we do not show a little originality in the construction of our cities, by returning to our traditional but modernized architectures, as long as our cities are not thought out, oriented by specialists, women and men with a vision, and as long as the first thing that we see in our cities is not garbage, we will do anything and we will not convince anyone, neither Ivorians nor foreigners, to come and visit them. The irony of history is that today, because we have abandoned our traditional architecture, what makes the originality in some of our localities is the presence of colonial houses. But as we do not know how to maintain anything, we leave them abandoned until they fall completely into ruin, to replace them with our concrete villas without charm or creativity.
But apart from our completely failed towns and villages, nature has blessed us with some wonders which, if they were well exploited, could have been sources of wealth for us. But we did with this wealth what we had done with our mineral resources until the arrival of the settlers, that is to say, nothing. We have for example the sea, lagoons, majestic rivers, from the Liberian border to that of Ghana. What did we do with it? In Abidjan, we built our slums by the sea, while the lagoons served as public toilets for the local populations. And we waited until we had polluted the bay of Cocody before going to get Moroccans at high prices to turn it into a marina. The same thing is happening with the Bingerville Lagoon which, in many places, is becoming a foul-smelling swamp over which vegetation grows. But apart from water bodies, we also have mountains, forests, savannahs. I have been to the sites of our transmitter centers in Koun Fao, Niangbo, Man, Tiémé, Séguéla, Bouaflé… They are located on sites from which we have a breathtaking view. I discovered in several of our localities old mosques and other monuments dating back several centuries. Who do we encourage to visit them?
I believe we need to understand a few simple things. The first is that tourism can enrich a country. Many countries in the world live mainly from tourism. The second is that we have assets in terms of tourism. And the third is that it only takes a bit of smarts to take advantage of it. A friend of mine who recently visited the Seychelles came back very frustrated. "The Seychelles are like Assinie or Grand-Bassam, that is to say the sea, and vegetation that looks like ours, and houses that look like our colonial houses. Except that over there, it's well maintained, well operated, and it's accompanied by good communication. We, in addition to having our coastline with its lagoons, we have our mountains, our forests, our savannahs. But we don't know how to take advantage of it."
In my previous column I talked about Sassandra which is a huge mess, because its inhabitants and town councilors do not know that they hold a treasure there. But there are also on this coast Jacqueville, Grand Lahou, Fresco, San Pedro, Grand Béréby, Tabou, which are so many unknown treasures. Why wouldn't the State of Ivory Coast tackle the problem head-on by implementing a real tourism development policy in this region? Especially since the "coastal" will soon open, and the African Cup of Nations (CAN), some matches of which will take place in San Pedro, will shine a tremendous spotlight on the region.
By Venance Konan
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
