From Ivory Coast

In February 2007, in a Timbres magazine's article, Michel Melot showed how is nowadays philatelic policies of French-speaking African countries. He underlined the difficulties to do this task : little communications from the postal authoriry, a WNS website dependent of this authority, editors that referenced stamps without value.

Two months later, a reader of the magazine told how she helped the German Michel Catalogue by sending them proofs of the stamps she found on mail from Africa.



While the WNS is updated until 2005 for the Ivory Coast, here is a proof on mail of the existence of a 2006 stamp.

The 100 CFA francs is from a series of four issued in Novembre 2005, about hair braid.

The 250 franc stamp announced the November 2006 China-Africa summit of Beijing. Since some decades the two Chinas (Taiwan and the People's Republic) used cooperation with African countries as a political mean. Taiwan to obtain international support againt its communist counterpart. The PRC to gain a prestigious place among the nations and voices of support in the UNO institutions where one country (even African one) is one voice. For this summit, the PRC received the leaders of Africa.

The large cover was cancelled in Abidjan on April 4th, 2007. She was received by a firm in Paris, quite unharmed (unless on the upper right stamped corner - sigh).

Total stamp value is 1100 CFA francs, equivalent to 1,68 €.