The board's approval comes a month after IMF staff first reached an agreement on the loan with Ivorian authorities.

The IMF said the country's authorities had made strong commitments to reducing the adverse effects of climate change, and the new funding would support an "ambitious homegrown package of reform measures."

The reforms include a mix of adaptation and mitigation efforts, including strengthening governance of climate policies, reinforcing safeguards for the agricultural sector, creating a framework for green and sustainable financing and building resilience to climate hazards.

Ivory Coast is "highly exposed to climate change mainly through rising temperatures and sea levels, and rain pattern changes," said IMF Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura.

"Economic vulnerabilities to climate change are exacerbated due to the country’s heavy reliance on agriculture and the concentration of industrial and services activity in coastal areas, while greenhouse gas emissions are rising," Okamura added.

The IMF authority said implementation of reforms under the RSF arrangement should improve Ivory Coast’s resilience to climate change over the medium term, replace more expensive financing, and help the country build buffers against climate shocks.

Strong collaboration with development partners should ensure complementarity of efforts to support the reform agenda, with the RSF expected to help catalyze large financing needs identified in the authorities’ plans, Okamura said.

The IMF said reviews under the 30-month RSF arrangement would coincide with reviews of separate Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangements approved in May 2023.

Gbagbo, president of the West African country from 2000 to 2011, launched his African People's Party - Cote d'Ivoire (PPA-CI) in 2021 following his acquittal on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and return from a decade abroad.

He was acquitted in 2019 by the Netherlands-based ICC on charges relating to his role in a civil war sparked by his refusal to concede defeat in an election.

Gbagbo lost control of the party he previously founded, the Ivorian Popular Front (IPF), to a former ally while imprisoned awaiting trial in the Netherlands for several years, but he retains a large and loyal base of supporters at home.

The election is expected to be held in October 2025. President Alassane Ouattara, who was re-elected in 2020, has not yet said whether he will run again.

Another possible contender is Tidjane Thiam, former chief executive of Swiss bank Credit Suisse, who in December became president of the PDCI, one of Ivory Coast's main opposition parties, though the party has not yet formally designated its chosen candidate.

"Emerse was until now interim coach and has just been confirmed today as full coach," the Ivoirian federation boss Idriss Diallo said.

The Elephants were facing elimination when they fired veteran French coach Jean-Louis Gasset in January after winning just one of their three group games at the tournament.

The next day, results fell the hosts' way and they squeezed through as the last of the four best third-placed teams.

Fae, a former Ivorian international who had never coached before, took over. He oversaw an incredible turnaround. In the last 16, the Ivorians came from behind to beat holders Senegal on penalties.

In their match against Mali, the Ivorians played much of the match with 10 men, but still came from behind to beat their West African opponents in extra-time.

After beating the Democratic Republic of Congo 1-0 in the last four, the AFCON host team came from behind once more to beat Nigeria 2-1 in the final and lift the trophy.

It would be an extraordinary achievement for the 40-year-old French-born former Ivorian international, who played for his country in the 2006 final albeit on the losing side.

He had been assistant to veteran French coach Jean-Louis Gasset over the last 18 months but was thrust into the top job when Gasset was sacked at the end of a disastrous group round at the tournament. The hosts barely scraped into the knockout stage as the last of the best four third-placed finishers.

They needed other results to go their way and it took an agonizing three day wait between their last group game — a humiliating 4-0 loss to Equatorial Guinea — and the end of the group games before they knew their fate.

By that time Gasset had been sent packing and Fae put in charge, despite the fact his only previous coaching experience was at youth level in France.

The Ivorians had hoped former coach Herve Renard, a two-time Cup of Nations winner, would be loaned to them for the rest of the tournament by France where he is the women’s national team coach, but their request was turned down.

"We had difficult days emotionally and mentally and we came through the back door," admitted Fae. "Losing 4-0 at home was terrible, and then afterwards we had to wait. Honestly, it was very difficult to work, to heal the wounds while crossing your fingers."

Fae made several key changes and the Ivorians showed impressive mental fortitude in overcoming holders Senegal in the last 16 and neighbors Mali in the quarter-final, coming from behind in both matches.

Their semi-final victory over the Democratic Republic of Congo continued the comeback.

Local press have dubbed Fae the "Special One."

"No, no, no, that’s not true," he replied on Saturday when asked about the tag first used for Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho. "It has been a collective to get us all here."

Fae had always intended to coach after his club career, which included a brief spell at English club Reading, came to a premature end because of injury. He worked at Clermont Foot and Nice before Gasset asked him to join the Ivorian staff.

"It was difficult for us to imagine we’d get to the final but now we are here and on merit. Now we have the opportunity to win the cup at our home. We’ll be going all out to do so."

An own-goal from Edmond Tapsoba and second-half strike from Lassine Sinayoko were enough for the Eagles to win the round-of-16 game, the last match of the tournament to be played in Korhogo.

Mali will next play Ivory Coast in Bouaké on Saturday, when the home team can count on supporters whose belief has been restored after beating defending champion Senegal on Monday.

Burkina Faso, which has repeatedly gone close to winning its first Africa Cup title in recent years, will have to prolong its wait after a campaign that never really sparked into life. The Stallions edged Mauritania 1-0, then drew 2-2 with Algeria, before losing their final group game 2-0 to Angola.

It was a bad start for Burkina Faso when Mali’s Amadou Haidara hit the post with a header and the ball rebounded off Tapsoba’s foot into his own net in the third minute.

Mali missed good chances to score before Sinayoko made it 2-0 by shooting between the goalkeeper’s legs in the 47th.

The Stallions were given a lifeline six minutes later when Kiki Kouyaté was penalized for hand ball. Bertrand Traoré scored from the spot to make it 2-1 in the 57th, finally giving his team the confidence to push for more.

Issoufou Dayo thought he’d equalized in the last minute but he had strayed offside before heading in a free kick.

World Cup semifinalist Morocco played South Africa later Tuesday for the last quarterfinal spot.

Equtorial Guinea advanced to the next round of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations after leading Group A of the tournament.

A government statement released Tuesday said Obiang Nguema, the world's longest-standing ruler, had watched excitedly as the team won on Monday.

The government also declared a public holiday after the team humiliated the Ivorians in Abidjan to finish ahead of the AFCON hosts and heavyweight contenders Nigeria.

Obiang Nguema’s son and the nation’s vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, promised an additional $54,000 to the squad for every goal that was scored against the Ivorians.

The West African country of around 1.5 million people has had only two presidents since independence from Spain in 1968. Obiang ousted his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema in a coup in 1979 and has been accused by critics of amassing great personal wealth despite doing little to pull the country out of poverty.

Nigeria and Ivory Coast, key West African allies to the United States, have largely stood by Washington despite unease in much of the continent over the Western focus on arming Ukraine and, more recently, support for Israel amid ongoing war with Hamas militants in the Middle East.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and Ivory Coast — as well as Kenya in East Africa — joined the United States in a United Nations vote in 2022 to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Their stance stands in contrast with another heavyweight, South Africa, which the U.S. accused of allowing arms shipments to Russia. Relations between Pretoria and Washington were again dented recently after the southern African powerhouse brought a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice.

Blinken’s itinerary does not include a trip to South Africa, however, he will visit Angola which has transitioned from war to democracy and played a vital role mediating to end unrest in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

Blinken has sought to showcase a softer side during his trip.

On Monday, the U.S. secretary stopped in Cape Verde, Washington’s long-standing partner. He later travelled to Ivory Coast where he attended a critical football game in the Africa Cup of Nations between the Ivorians and Equatorial Guinea.

During his stop in Cape Verde, Blinken visited a port in the nation’s capital, Praia, that was expanded through U.S. assistance.

While in Praia, Blinken said Washington was "all in" for Africa.

"We see Africa as an essential, critical, central part of our future," he added.

Despite Blinken’s sentiments, U.S. President Joe Biden failed to live up to a promise made to African leaders who visited Washington in late 2022, where he committed to travel to the continent in 2023.

Nigeria’s Tinubu met Biden in September on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in India, but Blinken's visit marks the most extensive high-level U.S. interaction with him.

The trip to the continent by the U.S. secretary, marks his first to sub-Saharan Africa in 10 months. On his last visit to the region, Blinken travelled to Niger to bolster the elected president, Mohamed Bazoum.

Four months later, Nigerien military officials deposed Bazoum.

The coup leaders threw out troops from former colonial power France but have allowed the presence of some 1,000 U.S. troops, who use Niger’s desert as a base for drones in the fight against jihadists.

Niger’s governing junta have also moved closer to Russia, whose Wagner mercenaries are already involved in Mali, Central African Republic and allegedly, Burkina Faso.

Ivory Coast and Nigeria, alongside other nations that are part of the West African regional ECOWAS bloc, have been outspoken in opposing Niger’s coup, with Ouattara musing about the possibility of military intervention.

The Ivorian president has won praise for his own efforts to stop the spread of insurgency to the northern regions of his nation, including economic support to give opportunities to young people.

The approach is in line with that of the Biden administration, which has called for a less military-first approach to the Sahel region after a decade of warfare backed by France to hunt down jihadists.

Nigeria’s Tinubu met Biden in September on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in India, but Blinken's visit marks the most extensive high-level US interaction with him.

The home team was left to rue a host of missed chances as Nsue opened the scoring before the break, and Pablo Ganet fired in a brilliant free kick after it, two minutes before the 34-year-old Nsue capped his performance with his fifth goal of the tournament.

Jannick Buyla completed the rout on a counterattack in the 88th.

It sent Equatorial Guinea into the knockout stage as group winner with seven points.

Nigeria defeated Guinea-Bissau 1-0 in the other Group A match to take second place on goal difference, while Ivory Coast was left with the faint hope that its three points will be enough to end among the four best third-place finishers who also go through to the last 16.

“When we saw the group stage, we saw we were playing two of the top teams in Africa, but we were in prayer,” said Equatorial Guinea goalkeeper Jesús Owono after his man-of-the-match performance. “I don’t know how far we can go. I know this team will work and do the same thing that we did today to reach as far as possible.”

Equatorial Guinea, the “National Thunder,” is only taking part for the fourth time.

Owono kept his team in the game by denying Nicolas Pépé in a one-on-one. The “Elephants” also had two goals ruled out through VAR for offside – Ibrahim Sangaré before the break and Jean-Philippe Krasso after it.

Owono’s counterpart, Yahia Fofana, had nothing to do until he picked the ball out of his net after Nsue fired the visitors ahead with their first attack in the 42nd. Carlos Akapo skipped through the Ivorian defense to set up Nsue and shock the fervent home fans at the 60,000-capacity Alassane Ouattara Stadium.

Opa Sanganté’s own-goal in the 36th minute was enough for Nigeria. The Guinea-Bissau defender was trying to cut out a cross for Victor Osimhen.

Osimhen again missed chances and his team’s lack of efficiency in yet another game will be a concern for “Super Eagles” coach José Peseiro.

Egypt and Ghana were battling later for second place in Group B with games against group winner Cape Verde and Mozambique, respectively. Only the top two are assured of progress.

A growing number of his fellow chefs in the West African nation are retouching local specialities with cooking skills picked up elsewhere.

One of Koffi's signature dishes is an adaptation of gouagouassou sauce, a local specialty.

In his version, a rabbit is stewed with African eggplants, spicy oil, powdered akpi seeds and local fefe pepper.

"It is one of the dishes I really loved as a child," Koffi told AFP. "As a chef, it was almost an obligation to come back to it."

Koffi was trained in France before opening his Abidjan restaurant, Villa Alfira, in 2017 to showcase his country's cuisine.

In the well-lit main dining room overlooking a pond where fish on the menu swim, Eric Guei tucked into a gouagouassou casserole.

"I find taste and audacity in this dish," the happy customer said. "It mixes Western know-how with local flavors."

Guei enjoyed the copious but beautifully presented meal with his friend Yasmine Doumbia. "Gouagouassou is a very traditional Ivory Coast dish, and to see it in a restaurant like this is a real pleasure," she said.

Villa Alfira is a change from the "maquis," typical animated local eateries where braised chickens and fish are eaten by hand, along with traditional sauces, manioc polenta, and fried plantains.

Grilled okra and cassava chips

A few kilometers away, a chef at the upscale restaurant La Maison Palmier is working on her new creation: a taster dish inspired by placali, a typical Ivorian dish made with sticky gumbo sauce, bits of meat and dried fish, accompanied by fermented manioc paste.

Hermence Kadio, who trained locally, has her own much lighter take on the classic. She grilled the gumbo (okra), while the cassava is puffed up and turned into chips.

Every week the restaurant's French head chef Matthieu Gasnier offers amuse-bouche — small bite-sized appetisers — like these to "re-awaken the memories of people who grew up with these dishes."

About half his clientele is Ivorian, he said.

"Even if our restaurant's cuisine is intended to be international since we are in a five-star hotel, I think it would be wrong not to take advantage of all these beautiful products that surround us," he said.

Grains such as fonio and sorghum grow in the Ivory Coast's hot dry northern savannas, said Koffi, while the forested south produces local varieties of spinach and typical tropical products such as bananas and yams.

Healthier and tastier

N'Cho Yapi, who founded the group Chefs: Creators of Emotions, said Ivorian cooks began going back to their culinary roots just after the turn of the century.

Before that, chefs at fancy restaurants "had the habit of offering Western dishes with imported products," he said. "But the cost of living kept going up," so they turned to less-expensive products "they had just under their noses."

And local specialties are appearing more and more on the menus of the luxury restaurants that have mushroomed across Abidjan in recent years, Yapi added.

Valerie Rollainth, an Ivorian chef trained in France at the famous Institut Paul Bocuse, insisted that typically hearty Ivorian cuisine is no longer suited to the capital's increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

"There are too few vegetables, a shocking quantity of oil, and the dishes are cooked too long" and lose their nutrients, she said.

At the nutritional workshops she organizes she urges people to eat local products in new ways, such as raw okra, which "is very good against diabetes."

"Some diseases are linked to eating habits," she said. "In the Ivory Coast, not everyone has access to health care, but everyone has access to healthy food."

But since February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, global geopolitical tensions and weather conditions elsewhere have upended the rice markets and by 2023, worldwide rice prices had exploded.

Yet Arnong said she made less than she has in years.

“The mills (that buy rice) don’t increase the price. What can I do? I bring rice there to sell. Whatever they offer us, we have to sell it. We won’t take the rice back because we had to pay for the truck,” said Arnong, 68.

In 2023, the prices of wheat and grains such as oats and corn declined 20% to 30% as stocks were replenished, according to an annual report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

But according to the FAO report, rice prices remained high throughout the year due to a persistent La Niña in March, followed by an El Niño anomaly in June and India imposing restrictions on non-basmati rice in July due after a late monsoon raised fears of a production shortfall.

India’s export control removed 9 million metric tons of grain from the international market and ignited global prices. India is responsible for 40% of global rice supplies after overtaking Thailand as the world’s largest rice exporter in 2011.

The countries most reliant on India’s rice include the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam in Southeast Asia, and Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal in West Africa.

“Rice is tough, because there are just not a lot of other suppliers,” Joseph Glauber, a senior fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, told Bloomberg in November, adding that India’s export-control policy leaves “a big hole to fill.”

The World Bank predicted, “Rice prices will remain high into 2024, assuming India maintains its export restrictions. The outlook assumes a moderate-to-strong El Niño.”

The bank’s commodity report published on October 30 said rice prices had reached their highest point in the third quarter of 2023 since the 2007-2008 food crises due to the Hamas-Israel conflict and El Niño.

While India’s controls benefit its own consumers, for the billions elsewhere in Asia and in Africa who depend on a stable rice supply, continued high prices could increase food insecurity.

In Nigeria, the cost of rice increased 61% from September through November. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast the nation would import 2.1 million metric tons of rice in 2024.

In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. imposed a price cap Sept. 5 after the cost of rice hit a 14-year high in September. Marcos, who blamed the soaring prices on “smugglers, hoarders and price manipulators,” removed the cap Oct. 13 as concerns over tight supply eased.

Alfie Pulumbarit, national coordinator at MASIPAG, a Philippine-based network of farmers, scientists and nongovernmental organizations working on farmer empowerment, told VOA Thai that rising food prices significantly affected the people in the island nation with “a lot of families now going hungry."

Citing official information, Pulumbarit said that while it takes a person at least 79 pesos or about $1.50 dollars per day to survive in the Philippines, rice now costs $1.10 dollars per kilogram.

Continued Indian controls coupled with farmers “already leaving rice production in the Philippines” could lead to “a food crisis of epic proportions,” he said.
Climate is one of the key factors in analyses for rice production and price in the coming year.

The U.S. National Weather Service forecasts that the Northern Hemisphere, home to major rice producers like China, India, and Southeast Asia nations, will likely be affected by El Niño April through June, right around sowing season for rice across Asia.

An Asian Bank Development analysis recommends that the private sector should assume a bigger role in rice trading to help stabilize domestic production loss in importing countries. It also encourages policymakers to consider more sustainable rice production.

“Rice paddy is responsible for 12% of global methane emissions and 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In Asia, rice irrigation consumes more than half of freshwater resources,” according to the analysis.

As the COP 28 meeting at Dubai was concluding, the FAO suggested stakeholders should seek out climate-friendly cultivating techniques ranging from using fertilizers that can reduce methane emission to growing plants that create rhizobacteria, which may promote producing oxygen in soil.

Smanachan Buddhajak contributed to this report.

The court of first instance in the capital Abidjan on Friday ordered the suspension of the congress, which had been planned for Saturday to elect a new Democratic Party leader before a presidential election in 2025.

The ruling followed an urgent request from two senior party members alleging opacity and irregularities in the organization of the congress, court documents seen by Reuters show.

The complaints were not directly aimed at Thiam, but the plaintiffs said that a day before the congress, they did not have the names of the shortlisted candidates for the presidency or the names of party members who will be voting.

The court sided with the plaintiffs and ordered the postponement of the congress.

The winner of the contest to lead the Democratic Party, known by its French acronym as the PDCI, stand the chance of being the party's candidate in the presidential election.

Since leaving Credit Suisse, Thiam, 61, has returned to politics in Ivory Coast, and submitted his candidacy last month to lead the party that ruled the West African nation from independence to the early 2000s.

Thiam's campaign team said in a statement on Saturday that police had cordoned the hotel in Abidjan where the congress was scheduled to hold. It urged supporters to avoid the area and wait for further instructions from the party.

Within the party rank and file, he is seen as an outsider with no strong grassroots base but with enough means to garner support.

Thiam served as a minister in Ivory Coast under former president Henry Konan Bedie. He left the West African country after Bedie's ouster in a 1999 military coup and worked for consultancy firm McKinsey, and insurers Aviva and Prudential, before his appointment as Credit Suisse CEO in 2015.

Thanks to the meters-high sandbag barricade, the Kame Surf Camp hotel clings to its section of beach in the resort of Assinie, even as the waves hem the hotel in on three sides and, in a recent surge, devastated the businesses of its neighbors.

"Frankly, I am exhausted," said Nassar, 50, who first came to the area as a child when this stretch of beach on the Gulf of Guinea was much wider and it took five minutes on foot to reach the shoreline.

Now he spends up to 1 million cfa francs ($1,640) a week to keep the sea at bay and his business afloat, buying truckloads of sand and hiring workers to pour it into bags and shore up the hotel's defenses.

Such expenses are likely to increase. Without adaptation, damages from sea level rise could cost 12 large African coastal cities up to $86.5 billion by 2050, according to U.N. climate experts. Those cities include Ivory Coast's commercial capital Abidjan, just down the coast from Assinie.

"A small business like mine, all it can do is fill sandbags and put them out front and pray for the best," Nassar said, surveying his sea wall in a skull T-shirt bearing the slogan: "Call of the Wave."

The rapidly growing populations of West Africa's low-lying coastal areas are particularly exposed to rising sea levels, a trend that is accelerating globally due to extreme glacier melt and record ocean heat levels, the World Meteorological Organization warned in April.

Coastal erosion at the palm-fringed tourist haven of Assinie is classified as of particular concern due to the high rate of beach loss at a resort that is an important economic hub, according to Ivory Coast's National Coastal Environment Management Program. It says the national coastal erosion rate averages between 0.5 and 3 meters a year.

Over several days in August, a series of rogue waves underscored the vulnerability of Assinie and other coastal towns east of Abidjan.

The oversized waves pummeled the shore, striking higher than ever before and devastating homes and businesses.

"I was lucky enough to anticipate ... but if you look around me, everything else has been completely destroyed," said Nassar, recalling the thunderous crash of the six and seven-meter-high waves against his homemade ramparts.

More than three months on from the onslaught, the water has receded from its peak but other hotels and restaurants are struggling to reopen after the waves swept away beach huts, swamped swimming pools and knocked down sea-facing walls.

The coordinator of the National Coastal Environment Management Program, Eric Djagoua, told Reuters such extreme events are becoming more frequent and said more political will was needed to protect vulnerable coastal infrastructure.

The urgency is clear. West Africa's coastal areas generate at least 56% of the region's economic activity and host a third of its population, according to a World Bank study from 2019.

Even as needs rise, richer countries are falling short on a promise to give $100 billion a year to help poorer countries adapt to climate change impacts like sea level rise.

For some, it is already too late.

Thirty kilometers down the coast from Kame Surf Camp, 60-year-old Alex Messan Kouassi stands in the wreckage of his home and hotel that the waves tore through in August.

"Everything is gone ... the sea came and took it all, what can I do?"

The world's top cocoa producer is at the tail end of its rainy season, and entering a dry season that runs officially from mid-November to March. Rainfall is low and sporadic during this period.

The dry season also brings Harmattan winds that blow south from the Sahara between December and March. The Harmattan can damage crops when too strong.

Several farmers said they expected the main crop to peak with abundant harvests in December and January.

But they noted that early Harmattan winds could hinder the development of small pods that should be ready for harvest in February and March, leading to a shortage of beans.

"For now everything is fine. We have a lot of harvesting but we are wondering when the Harmattan will arrive and how it will behave," said Claude Amani, who farms near the central region of Yamoussoukro, where 24.7 millimeters (mm) of rain fell last week, 16.3 mm above the five-year average.

Similar conditions were reported from the center-western region of Daloa and the central region of Bongouanou.

Rainfall was also above average in the southern regions of Agboville and Divo, where farmers said they were cutting plenty of cocoa pods from trees as tree yields were increasing.

They added that the weather was ideal for drying beans.

"We are off to a good start for many harvests until next year," said Emmanuel Yavo, who farms near Agboville, where 24 mm of rain fell last week, 3.9 mm above average.

Rainfall was below average in the western region of Soubre and in the eastern region of Abengourou.

Average weekly temperatures ranged between 27.6 and 29.2 degrees Celsius.