Economy of the Central African Republic – Week 9 – Anneleen Coppens

Like Julie mentioned in her latest blog, Chad is a country surrounded by Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger.

Since we already visited Chad and Libya, we decided to continue our journey to the Central African Republic.

Manioc

Here in CAR I met this kind African girl and she told me only 3% of this land is under cultivation. This surprised me because the overwhelming majority of the population here is engaged in agriculture. She showed us a plot of land her parents own and there was manioc, corn and also a few banana trees.

In 2010 they had a very good year and the economy finally recovered from the suffering of the global economic and financial crisis that broke out in 2008. The crises of the past two years made this country fragile.

Luckily the inhabitants are blessed with abundant natural resources such as diamonds, uranium, gold, mineral, timber, …

The most popular imported goods are food, textiles, petroleum products, machinery, electrical equipment, motor vehicles, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Our country, Belgium, is together with France and the United States one of the chief trading partners of CAR. 

After a cup of thee she showed us a special stamp from her collection. It had Jean Bedel Bokassa on it, a symbol of the corruption that characterizes many African leaders.

He once ruled for 14 years and began nationalizing the industries. This resulted in a declining economy. Also the leaders that ruled after him showed CAR that they weren’t capable of managing the economy here.

The most gruesome thing she told us was the fact that Bokassa got accused of cannibalism by Amnesty International. He condemned opponents to death by public execution and then sometimes fed them to wild animals.

This story actually made my day a bit gloomy but I’m sure this feeling will pass once we discovered the cultural aspects!

Sleep tight,

Anneleen

Sources:

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0857228.html

http://www.africaneconomicoutlook.org/en/countries/central-africa/central-african-republic/