Effets économiques du paludisme sur les cultures de rente : l'exemple du café et du cacao en Côte d'Ivoire

The sectors of coffee and cocoa represented in Côte d?Ivoire, before the political crisis, approximately 15 % of the GDP and 40 % of exports. The production area of these two crops is the forest which is a malaria endemic area. The cultivation of these crops is less constraining than that of the food crops such as rice or yam that needs to be replanted each year. However, the maintenance of the ground and trees and the pest management are important tasks that contribute to obtain high yields. But, by increasing the work time in fields, they also expose farmers to mosquitoes bites and then to malaria risk. Farmers also grow food crops and more specifically, rice as rainy cultivation such as for some of them, lowland irrigated cultivation. The objective of this paper is twofold, first, to evaluate the role of malaria on coffee and cocoa productions, second, to assess the role of the rice production scheme on malaria transmission. Three functions are thus estimated: production of coffee, production of cocoa and production of health. Data were collected during a survey carried out on 750 households (21 villages) in the forest area. The main results are that malaria has no effect on coffee and cocoa productions and that lowland irrigated rice cultivation is not a risk factor for malaria transmission.