# Dear Côte d’Ivoire

- Link: https://perfectnations.org/dear-cote-divoire/
- Published: 2026-11-06T10:36:49-04:00
- Author: Preeti Sinha

[The Côte d’Ivoire blueprint](https://perfectnations.org/blueprints/cote-d-ivoire/)

Perfect Nations™ · Letters to the NationsCôte d’Ivoire

# Dear Côte d’Ivoire,

Orange, white and green: the savannah of the north, peace, and the forests of the
south. You grow more cocoa than any nation on earth, and you invented a new way 
to turn expensive debt into schools.

Think of what you have already built. In December 2024 you used a World Bank guarantee
to buy back your most expensive debt with a cheaper loan, freeing about EUR 330 
million over five years for education. Your IMF programmes total about $4.8 billion,
and in June 2026 the IMF released about $833 million as your deficit reached 3 percent
of GDP.

At home the work has begun. Sixty-two in every hundred of you can always count on
enough good food. The World Bank is financing health, nutrition and early childhood
care for millions of mothers and children, and services and income for 1.8 million
people in the West.

The work ahead is plain, and it is worth saying plainly. At the last count, in 2019,
eighty in every hundred of your children reached the end of primary school unable
to read a simple text. Only twenty-seven in every hundred of you have a safely managed
toilet at home. Only thirty-six in every hundred of you drink safely managed water
at home. Reading sets your Coverage today, at 20.1 out of 100, with shelter and 
water close behind. Each of them is within your reach.

Now imagine that same resolve turned toward every home in the country. Picture Perfect
Côte d’Ivoire: a morning when every family cooks with clean fuel and sits down to
a full table; when every tap runs clean and every home has a safe toilet; when every
child walks to a school where a teacher is waiting, and reads with ease by the age
of ten; when every mother lives within reach of a clinic with the lights on, and
every young person finds work that pays. And no Ivorian falls below a decent life,
because the nation has decided that none will.

None of this needs a miracle. It needs what you already own: your cocoa, your forests,
your lagoon port at Abidjan, your farmland and a financial creativity the world 
is now copying. They are assets no balance sheet counts, and together they can carry
every Ivorian to food, water, shelter, energy, education, health and a livelihood.

> “You turned expensive debt into classrooms. Now turn those classrooms into readers.”

So this is an invitation. Bring your vision, your story and your solutions to the
Perfect Côte d’Ivoire Design Studio, and join the Co-designers who are already imagining
what comes next. Perfect Côte d’Ivoire will not be designed for you. It will be 
designed by you.

Yours in design,

**Preeti Sinha**

President and CEO, Perfect Nations

Sources: [World Bank, 2024](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/12/05/c-te-d-ivoire-s-debt-for-development-swap-enabled-by-the-world-bank-group-will-free-up-funds-for-education)·
[IMF, 2026](https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/06/24/pr26222-cote-divoire-imf-exec-board-completes-sixth-rev-eff-ecf-arr-5th-rev-rsf-arr)·
[World Bank, 2026](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2026/04/30/world-bank-approves-225-million-to-improve-health-nutrition-and-early-childhood-services-for-millions-in-cote-d-ivoire)·
[World Bank, 2019](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.LPV.PRIM?locations=CI)·
[WHO/UNICEF, 2024](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.SMSS.ZS?locations=CI)·
[WHO/UNICEF, 2024](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.H2O.SMDW.ZS?locations=CI)·
[World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/country/ci)

 [Enter the Design Studio](https://perfectnations.org/blueprints/cote-d-ivoire/#bp-studio)
[Read the Côte d’Ivoire blueprint](https://perfectnations.org/blueprints/cote-d-ivoire/)