The days when Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the US president, visited Côte d’Ivoire to promote women’s rights now seem distant. Dressed in a pristine white dress, Trump toured the cocoa plantations in the Adzopé region, North of Abidjan, and danced with the women who worked there. That was in 2019, during her father’s first term, and she was accompanied by Mark Green, the head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) − the same agency that Donald Trump dismantled on the first day of his second term.
Six years ago, Ivanka Trump came to support the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which aimed to foster economic empowerment for 50 million women, and announced $2 million in funding for savings groups run by cocoa farmers. “When women are free to thrive, they bring national stability, as well as more jobs and economic growth,” she argued. Her visit boosted USAID’s efforts in this field, all of which were abruptly ended in January.
“We were told to immediately stop all activities,” said Francine Aka-Anghui, former president of the Association of Women Lawyers of Côte d’Ivoire, who worked on one of these projects. “For our beneficiaries, hope disappeared overnight.” “The end of American aid is catastrophic for African women,” said Ivorian feminist Sylvia Apata. “USAID enabled significant progress in women’s rights on the continent. Unless African governments take responsibility – and I doubt they will – we are going to witness a historic setback.”
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