Edition: U.S. / Global

Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast's Leader Since Freedom in 1960, Is Dead

Published: December 8, 1993

President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, Africa's oldest and longest-serving head of state and one of the last of a generation of African leaders to guide his people from colonalism, died yesterday. He was officially said to be 88 years old, but was widely believed to be much older.

His death was announced by Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in a televised address 33 years to the day after the West African country gained its independence from France. Mr. Ouattara said the President had died at 6:35 A.M. Mr. Houphouet-Boigny recently underwent surgery for cancer of the prostate, but the cause of death was not immediately known.

The Speaker of Parliament, Henri Konan-Bedie, said that he had taken over, Reuters news service reported. The official television introduced Mr. Konan-Bedie as the new head of state as provided in the constitution.

"The constitution confers on me in this tragic moment responsibilities of whose weight I am aware, the responsibilities of a head of state," Mr. Konan-Bedie, 59, said in a brief televised address. "I am assuming them from now."

Since becoming President of the Ivory Coast in 1960, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny (pronounced oof-WET bwahn-YEE) had presided over a tenfold increase in per capita income, to about $900 today, in what had been one of France's less developed African colonies. Of African countries south of the Sahara that do not export oil, the Ivory Coast has a per capita income second only to South Africa's. Agriculture Was Priority

A central element in the Ivory Coast's prosperity was Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's singular decision to give industrial development a low priority, believing it wiser to develop the nation's agricultural resources first, and only later concentrating on providing efficient ports, good roads, power and communications.

He also encouraged foreign investment with laws that imposed few restrictions on the transfer of profits and capital -- a policy that was scorned by his more nationalistic neighbors. The first 20 years or so after independence bore out his strategy well.

Coffee production increased significantly, catapulting the Ivory Coast into third place behind Brazil and Colombia in total production. By the early 1980's it became the world's leading cocoa producer. It also became Africa's leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil.

The Ivory Coast's rapid economic progress was often cited as a showcase for successful capitalist development in an African setting. And through a confluence of political acumen, eloquence and a calm and authoritative manner, this short, small-boned, almost delicate-appearing man, was able to avoid most of the fierce confrontation and political turmoil that have tormented post-independence Africa. Even his harshest critics, who called him a tool of neocolonialism, concede that he instilled a strong sense of nationhood among the country's nearly 60 distinct ethnic groups.

The stability that he built during his first two decades in office seriously began to erode in recent years. Much of the deterioration was caused by a dramatic slump in world commodity prices, which threw the economy into a tailspin. In recent months, for the first time in memory, some civil servants were not paid; and there was talk of huge future layouts.

Moreover, scores of Ghanaians were killed in the Ivory Coast last month after a soccer match in Ghana that Ghana won. That made many foreigners fearful for their safety.

In the wake of mounting street protests during the spring of 1990, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny reluctantly lifted the ban on opposition parties, opening the way for multiparty government. At the time, his principal political opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, a history professor, made an issue of the President's age, obliquely suggesting that he was not sufficiently fit for a seventh five-year term.

The President did little to deflect such criticism. In the waning days of the campaign, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny was virtually invisible, relying mostly on old television footage of himself in his younger days to sway the electorate. The tactic appeared to work: he swept to victory in presidential polls in October that year. A Wealthy Planter's Son

Felix Houphouet-Boigny was born Oct. 18, 1905 -- or up to seven years earlier, according to some unofficial accounts -- in Yamoussoukro, a town 160 miles north of Abidjan, then the Ivory Coast capital. The son of a wealthy chief who owned large cocoa and coffee plantations, Mr. Houphouet-Boigny made his way through the French colonial education system to become a prosperous rural doctor and successful planter.

He turned to politics in the mid-1940's, a tense period in which nationalists in France's eight West African colonies were clamoring for change and self-determination. In 1944 he was a co-founder, with other disgruntled African planters, of the African Agricultural Syndicate, a group organized to protect its members' interests against inroads made by French settlers. He soon rose to prominence and within a year -- after converting the organization into the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast -- he was elected a deputy to the French National Assembly.