Introduction

The decision to devalue the CFA Franc in January 1994 was probably one of the longest-awaited decisions in the modern history of adjustment policies. The exchange rate with the French Franc had not changed since 1948. While the performance of the CFA Zone economies had been much better than those of the other African economies until the collapse of most commodity prices in 1986–8, the latter had been undoubtedly much better at adjusting to these shocks (Devarajan and Rodrik, 1992). It was probably in 1989 that the need to devalue was the most acute, after the collapse of the TOT in most of the Zone at the end of 1987, and the decision by President Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire to withdraw the whole cocoa crop from the market in 1988; he tried single-handedly to support the world cocoa market, and ruined his country's creditworthiness (Azam and Morrisson, 1994). The impact of this worsening of the macro-economic situation on poverty can be analyzed only in the case of Côte d'Ivoire, among the CFA Zone countries, as none of the others has two household surveys performed at the relevant dates, allowing us to compare the outcomes before and after this shock.