Côte d’Ivoire, where demand for new vehicles has been very high in recent years, is now a car manufacturing country. A first minibus assembly site was inaugurated with great fanfare on Monday January 10 in Abidjan.
The manufactured Iveco Daily minibuses, assembled in Abidjan, will be configured on demand as ambulances, police buses or refrigerated trucks. And the order book is already full until 2024.
The “Daily Ivoire”, as it is called locally, is 30% cheaper than its 100% European imported counterpart. Sixty examples are already ready to leave the warehouse of the Société des transports abidjanais, Sotra, where they were assembled and which thus becomes a car manufacturer.
Iveco Bus and Sotra now hope to bring out and attract more and more local suppliers.
Another ambition is to export these “made in Côte d’Ivoire” minibuses to the sub-region and to attract other manufacturers such as Toyota, with whom discussions are underway.