Taking English lessons.

After years tied to the Francophone economic sphere, Cote d'Ivoire, like so many other West African countries, is looking to the English speaking world for investment.

The Prime Minister of Cote d'Ivoire, M Daniel Kablan Duncan led one of the country's strongest business delegations, comprising 20 Ministers and a host of civil servants and businessmen, to Britain last month in a determined bid to "ouvre les portes" to the English speaking world.

The Ivorian delegation was one in a steady stream of francophone African countries that seem to have rediscovered the existence of a non-French speaking commercial universe. It seems the devaluation of the CFA, which reportedly slashed the living standards of the urban elites by at least a half, has finally persuaded these countries that they are not, after all, really a part of France and that they had better look to themselves to survive in the harsher economic climate of the day.

Whatever the reason, the Cote d'Ivoire, or in old English, the Ivory Coast, arrived with a substantial track record to offer to potential investors. Under the benign dictatorship of the late President Houphouet-Boigny, the country enjoyed a period of stability and growth unparalleled anywhere else in Africa. From independence to the early 1980s, Cote d'Ivoire grew at an astonishing 7% per annum - The Great Ivorian Miracle - before falling coffee and cocoa prices and mounting external debts gradually built up into an economic crisis.

If it was the full blooded state involvement that created for Cote d'Ivoire one of the most modern and sophisticated infrastructures in West Africa, then it was the same state involvement that killed competitiveness and bound the economy in so much red tape that it reached near paralysis.

M Duncan, addressing a seminar entitled 'Investment and Trade Opportunities in Cote d'Ivoire', acknowledged as much, but said that a new atmosphere of liberalisation now prevailed under the leadership of President Henri Konan Bedie.

The onus was now firmly on private enterprise and M Duncan and his delegation had come to London expressly to increase trade and investment relations between the two countries. Indeed the delegation not only met the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Mr Michael Heseltine but also signed an historic bilateral investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with British Foreign Secretary, Mr Douglas Hurd.

Although, as M Duncan pointed out, Britain only accounts for 3% of Cote d'Ivoire's external trade, some 20 British companies are located in the country. One of these, the West African giant Unilever, has been present and active in Cote d'Ivoire since the 1920s.

Mr Colin Duncan, head of mergers and acquisitions at Unilever said that his group currently had industrial sales turnover of around [pounds]100m plus another [pounds]30m turnover in trading activities in Cote d'Ivoire.

Another speaker during the seminar, Mr Steven Bates, Director of the finance investment company Robert Fleming & Co, said that Cote d'Ivoire was one of the most promising emerging markets in Africa. "Investors don't like volatility," he said, and "volatile Cote d'Ivoire is not".

But niggling questions continued to irritate the audience. Despite the devaluation of the CFA, it was still firmly wedded to the French franc. What would happen if the franc, which some consider overvalued against the DM, were to itself devalue? Where would that put the CFA? The CFA, like any other currency, would find its own level, replied M Duncan.

In turn he pointed out that the devaluation had increased competitiveness and that despite gloomy projections, inflation had been restrained to 32%, interest rates had fallen and the budget had shown a surplus of CFA 54.9bn.

M Duncan said that his country's growth target for 1995 was 6% and at least 10% in 1998. "If we maintain these average growth rates 20 years from now, Cote d'Ivoire will join the ranks of the newly industrialised nations".

For most participants at the seminar, these figures seemed heavily optimistic at best. Despite its impressive city skylines Cote d'Ivoire is still largely an economy based on agriculture and its fortunes are still very much dependent on the price of cocoa on the world market.

In fact, as the Ivorian delegation pointed out, the best opportunities for investment still lie in the agricultural and mining sectors of the economy, although tourism is rapidly becoming an important foreign exchange earner.

However, there is little to suggest, as yet, that the Ivorians have the thrusting entrepreneurship that can lead to the sort of rapid industrialisation as took place in Mauritius, and accelerate growth into double digit figures. There is also a sense of cocooned naivitee about Ivorians that suggests that they are less than completely comfortable outside their French environment.

Still, the start made by M Duncan and his delegation has, relatively speaking, been impressive. Everything will depend on the follow-up.