68.
Bukh provides a classic case of the consequences of unplanned development. He documents the mechanisms by which women have lost land, been denied access to credit, agricultural inputs and services, and begun protesting their situation. The author is to be commended because he considers both sexes' contribution to production, disaggregates the data by gender, and provides an historical perspective which shows that "progress" does not come evenly to all segments of the population. This book will be more useful for courses concerned with the development, farming systems and gender roles.
Ivory Coast: The Challenge of Success. By Baastian A. den Tuinder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Review by Robert Mundt, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The Ivorian case is at the center of many discussions of growth and
development strategies in Africa. In basing the country's economy unequivocally on private foreign investment, President Houphouet-Boigny bucked the ideological tide of the 1960s. Consequently, there is more at stake in the debate about his success than the destiny of a single African economy. Not surprisingly, much has already been written, mostly polemical, on the subject.1
Den Tuinder headed a World Bank mission to the Ivory Coast in 1975.
This book is essentially his report to the Bank of the mission's assessment of the soundness of the Ivorian economy. It includes an introductory economic history, detailed descriptions of current economic planning and policy, and of Ivorian economic relations with other countries. Without staking out an ideological position, den Tuinder presents data relevant to discussions of dependency: The concentration of trade patterns, balance of payments, foreign exchange holdings, and imports of vital resources (petroleum). Three interrelated problems are identified: employment, income distribution, and the presence of African and non-African foreign populations. The book concludes with a prescriptive econometric model and a corresponding set of policies, while admitting that many of these suggestions (e.g. in taxation and education) are probably not politically feasible.
This work offers no new cures for poverty and underdevelopment, even for countries with relatively high potential. Its principal merit is that it presents, in a vocabulary accessible to the layman, a dispassionate analysis of an important model of development as it operates in a real-world case. Students of Third World economies will find it rich in generalizable observations.
1 The book-length literature alone includes Samir Amin, Le Dveloppement du Capitalisme en C~te d'Ivoire, Michael A. Cohen, Urban Policy and Political Conflict in Africa, and Jon Woronoff, West African Wager.