Agricultural Raw Materials and the Emergence of Agri-Food Industry in Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

The agricultural sector in Côte d’Ivoire still faces difficulties like, low modernization, low yield, low rate of processing, poor marketing, despite the government efforts in the Agri-Food Industries (AFIs). The purpose of this study was to assess if local agricultural products were sufficiently used as raw materials by the AFIs. The Leontief model was used to estimate vertical and horizontal coefficients, based on data from the 2013 employment resources table of the ivorian economy, in order to appreciate the dependence on raw materials supply, between agricultural sector, the AFIs and the international market. This study showed that, the ivorian AFIs were weakly dependent on the external market (20%). Despite the large supply capacity of the agricultural products (about 95%), very few were used as raw materials (5 to 15%) by agro-food industries because of the weak industrial fabric, due to several constraints as the hostile administrative and political environment and the lack of industrial culture. The processing rate was estimated at 5% for cashew, 15% for cocoa and coffee and less than 1% for food crops. We identified the determinants for the emergence of an efficient industrial fabric namely healthy business climate, a prerequisite for attracting domestic and international investors.