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Paper short abstract:

Relying on an ethnographic survey and a historical analysis of the Cooperation Agreements signed between Cote D’Ivoire and France in 1960, this contribution examines the confines of the concepts of independence, freedom, and autonomy and their realities and contradictions among Ivoirians.

Paper long abstract:

In 2017, Franco-Beninese activist, Kemi Seba in a symbolic protest against the CFA currency burnt a 5,000 CFA bank note. His subsequent arrest provoked just another protest fuelled by anti-France and anti-CFA sentiments. The crux of the longevity of these anti- France, anti-CFA protests exemplifies either an unwillingness or an inability to address the core of these protests. The core of these protests are framed in the narratives and opinions of the nature and constituents of freedom, autonomy, and independence of Francophone Africa from colonial France. Thus, bringing to focus the incongruity of the notions of independence as envisioned, attained, and sustained since the 1960s by their political leaders and the realities of the present. In this contribution, the focus of this interrogation will be Cote D’Ivoire as one of the Francophone countries with the deepest historical and contemporary ties to France. This paper provides an intersectional analysis of the concepts of independence, freedom and autonomy of Cote D’Ivoire within a transactional paradigm. By aligning and analyzing these concepts from the perspectives of the three main actors enshrined within this paradigm: France, Cote D’Ivoire and Ivoirians, the modalities of these concepts are examined. It interrogates the modalities of these concepts by France through the nature and context of the Cooperation Treaties signed in 1960 with Cote D’Ivoire, challenges the mode of Cote D’Ivoire as discussed in the contents of these Treaties, and finally the perspective of Ivoirians to the affectations of these Treaties in contemporary times. In this multi- tiered, convoluted paradigm, this paper argues the complex realities that show these conceptions as not merely free floating imaginaries, but ones bound and tethered to the systems and institutions that perhaps call to notion the very meaning of these concepts.