Ivory Coast

Abidjan (AFP) “In our house, the beer is Bock!” boasts the familiar slogan for the lager that is Ivory Coast’s market leader, brewed by Solibra. “Beer Ivoire, loved by Ivorians!” says a competing advert for Ivoire lager, brewed by newcomers Brassivoire. On posters and huge billboards around the west African country, the rival ads, often side by side, compete for attention. Since Brassivoire’s arrival in the country’s emerging beer market in April 2016, the two breweries have been battling it out in what some observers are calling “the beer war”.Read More

Abidjan (AFP) Authorities in Ivory Coast have seized a record haul of three tonnes of pangolin scales worth an estimated $82,000, in what officials on Thursday called a “massacre”. Eight men of various African nationalities were apprehended overnight on Tuesday as they prepared to sell their merchandise, probably to Asia, said police captain Thimotee Gnahore of the country’s transnational organised crime unit (UCT) told reporters in Abidjan. The shy pangolin’s brown scales are made of nothing more than keratin — the same substance as fingernails — but are highly prizedRead More

Guingouine (Côte d’Ivoire) (AFP) Leaving behind chic gowns and catwalks to stomp in the mud in heavy work boots, Guinean former fashion model Tiguidanke Camara has made herself west Africa’s first woman mine owner. In the small forest village of Guingouine, in the west of Ivory Coast, Camara runs a team of 10 geologists and labourers who are probing the soil for gold deposits. She readily wades into a mucky pond to help take laboratory samples. “When I was a model, I showed off for the jewellers. They have licencesRead More