LATE LAST November, when voting was taking place in the second round of Ivory Coast’s election, I was in southern Mali, travelling between remote villages in the countrys cotton belt.
The Ivorian border was just a few kilometres to the south, and the radio news bulletins offered crackly, non-stop coverage of the long-awaited contest between Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo. It gave rise to a strong sense of hope and anticipation; this, after all, was the moment Ivory Coast would symbolically turn its back on the civil war that raged from 2002 to 2004. In a place where every family seemed to have someone living across the border, the election was the first topic of conversation everywhere I went.
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