“I don’t know Giscard d’Asting. I don’t know who he was!”: Franck Hervé Mansoou, a 31 -year -old resident of Abidjan, is delighted that the ivory economic capital goes to the boulevard named the former French president and other roads.
Several Western Africa countries have decided in recent years to change the name of their public space, denouncing an still too visible presence of the old French colonial power, such as Senegal. Or more radically as the military regimes of Niger, Burkina Faso and Malí.
Modernization
But Ivory Costa, one of the last allies in Paris in the region, did not want to register in this approach, said the project manager in the Ministry of Construction, Alphense N’Guessan. The country has simply “decided to modernize its system” as the street name, he says.
The names of the streets “were not necessarily used by our populations” then …