France, through the French Development Agency (AFD) and Côte d'Ivoire signed a financing agreement of 40 million euros on Thursday April 29 in Abidjan. This support is part of the Support Project for the Resilience of Cotton Systems in Northern Côte d'Ivoire (Resco).

The signing ceremony was attended by Ministers Adama Coulibaly, Moussa Sanogo respectively Minister of Economy and Finance and Minister of Budget and State Portfolio, Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of Economy, Finance and Recovery, Emmanuel Debroise, director of the Afd agency in Abidjan and Jean Christophe Belliard, the French Ambassador to Côte d'Ivoire.
For Bruno Le Maire, this “very symbolic” initiative will boost the cotton sector while guaranteeing its sustainability. He wants this kind of investment in the cocoa sector, of which Côte d'Ivoire is the leading producer. “The possibility of adding value to Cocoa and having an agri-food industry behind it that adds value to cocoa protects you from the fluctuation of cocoa costs (…) It creates jobs in the territory and it gives value to the Ivorian economy. All of this is the course in which we want to orient ourselves, ”underlines the French Minister of Economy, Finance and Recovery.