Historicity of extraversion in Côte d'Ivoire and the 'post-conflict'

Since independence Côte d'Ivoire has been an important feature of the debate on dependency in development theory, as Côte d'Ivoire was either a 'mirage' for the dependency school, or a 'miracle' according to mainstream development theorists. Against economicism and an instrumental view of these dynamics, Jean-François Bayart proposed a renewed understanding of dependency, without denying its existence. This article discusses the relevance and heuristic capacities of the concept of extraversion to understand how elites in Côte d'Ivoire mobilised resources derived from their relationship with the external environment since the end of the post-electoral crisis in 2011. These practices - material and symbolic - are important to understand Alassane Ouattara's first term (2011-2015) and put international peace building and state building policies in perspective. At its core, it raises many key issues for Côte d'Ivoire: the post-colonial quest for autonomy and the issue of dependency, the complex relationship between state formation and globalisation, and the specific context of the francophone space. The strength of extraversion is to highlight the agency of the African subject - in this case its elites - but we should not forget both the historicity of the specific insertion of Africa in the world, as well as the dynamics of change, against univocal causal interpretation.