The project was not born out of the attempted coup d’Etat of 19 September or the crisis which resulted from it. The project arose from the acknowledgement that the Ivory Coast is a country with one of the highest rates of emigration in the world. "Every native of the Ivory Coast has a member of his family abroad or lives himself outside the country," says Serge Daniel Atteby, publication director.

The creation of IvoireDiaspo.com was made possible thanks to the personal financial contribution of a group of intellectuals from the Ivory Coast living in Europe and in North America.

IvoireDiaspo.com gathers a team of four journalists, having professional experience of at least six years, and six interns. One journalist and two interns live in the Ivory Coast.

Before launching a print version of the newspaper envisaged for 2003, IvoireDiaspo.com will try to take root in the Ivory Coast media landscape. The website will create bridges with other newspapers in the Ivory Coast and with the local or exiled Ivorian population.

"After the creation of the website, we contacted the whole media in the country, and especially the print media, which have no financial means to create a website such as ours. The daily Le Nouveau Rveil answered this offer and we created a sub-domain for this newspaper, which we publish in its entirety," Mr Atteby says.

As for readers, IvoireDiaspo.com emphasises interactivity. The site contains a forum of discussion and a possibility of voting for polls on questions about current events. But above all, IvoireDiaspo.com invites its readers to publish their articles. This possibility is offered directly by going on the website’s homepage: http://www.ivoirediaspo.com

"The sending of articles by other writers occurs in the simplest possible way. Our readers send us propositions of articles. We study them, edit them and publish them," says Mr Atteby, who adds that, except for the three staff members in Abidjan, everyone in IvoireDiaspo.com work on a voluntary basis.

Mr Atteby hopes the formula will attract advertisers to allow IvoireDiaspo.com to survive and to create a print version. "Despite our limited financial possibilities, we sponsor cultural activities, forums of discussions among Ivorians and other communities. All this allows, at the same time, to make the website well-known," he says.