Domestic Politics

Following the legislative elections held on 18 December 2016, the political year began with a series of new appointments to key government positions. On 10 January, President Alassane Ouattara named outgoing Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan as the country’s first vice president. Duncan had served as minister of finance when Alassane Ouattara was prime minister in the early 1990s, and had been appointed prime minister in 1993 when Ouattara resigned after losing a power struggle to Henri Konan Bedié following the death of the country’s first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Duncan had joined Ouattara’s government as minister of foreign affairs in 2011, and been appointed prime minister in November 2012. All major political actors welcomed his appointment as vice president, in part because of his long and loyal service to the country and also because he was generally perceived not to be interested in running for president in the potentially highly competitive elections in 2020. The new post of vice president was set up under constitutional changes voted by referendum and approved in November 2016, along with the establishment of a second legislative chamber, the first ever Ivorian Senate, to which one-third of its 99 members are appointed directly by the president.

The task of replacing Duncan as prime minister was bestowed upon the former secretary-general to the president’s office, and long-standing councillor to Alassane Outtara, Amadou Gon Coulibaly. Prime Minister Coulibaly announced his new government on 17 January, with only minor changes to the previous composition. Coulibaly was also assigned responsibility for the ministerial portfolio of the national budget on 19 July. Guillaume Soro, the former leader of the ‘Forces Nouvelles’ (fn) rebel movement, who had served as prime minister for five years until 2012, was re-elected speaker of parliament on 9 January.

In the days preceding these high-level political appointments, a series of army mutinies raised fears of a military coup or a return to armed conflict. On 6 January, armed soldiers broke into an armoury in the central town of Bouaké and took to the streets, shooting into the air, taking control of local police stations and setting up roadblocks, effectively shutting down most of the main entry points into the city centre. Within a day, mutinies had spread to Abidjan, Korhogo and several smaller towns across the country. In addition to concerns about a potential destabilisation of the country, there was also speculation that the mutinies might be politically motivated, as the appointment of the new vice president and prime minister had yet to be announced. These initial fears were laid to rest when the demands of the soldiers were made public and primarily concerned payment of salaries and other financial compensations. It also became clear that the protesting soldiers were former rebel fighters from the ‘Forces Armées des Forces Nouvelles’ (fafn). They had been integrated into the Ivorian armed forces following the 2010–11 post-electoral crisis but were demanding financial recompense as well as a clarification of their military ranks and improvements to their conditions of service. Many of these soldiers had been involved in similar mutinies in 2014.

The mutinies ended on 8 January, following a statement on national tv by President Ouattara in which he urged the soldiers to return to their barracks and promised to address their demands. Following a day of gunfire across Bouaké, the leaders of the mutiny accepted the government’s conditions, which included the promise of a one-time remuneration of CFAfr 12 m, equivalent to approximately € 18,000, to be paid out to 8,400 former rebels in the armed forces in two instalments. In the aftermath of these negotiations, Ouattara relieved Chief of Staff General Soumaila Bakayoko, Senior Commander of the National Gendarmerie Gervais Kouassi and Director General of Police Bredou M’Bia of their duties.

On 18 January, the agreement between the government and the mutineers proved to have stirred resentment in other sections of the armed forces, as shots rang through several cities once more, this time from members of the gendarmerie (military police), blocking parts of the port authority in Abidjan and of the city centre of Bouaké, and taking to the streets in other parts of the country. The gendarmes were reacting to the initiation of payments of instalments of CFAfr 5 m (roughly € 7,500) to the mutinying soldiers on 17 January, and their protests added to the threats of a general strike by public officials, which had begun on 9 January, with claims for similar financial compensation for unpaid salaries. In the administrative capital of Yamoussoukrou, mutinying gendarmes were confronted by some of the soldiers behind the earlier mutiny, resulting in the deaths of at least two gendarmes. To appease the mutineers and public officials, the government promised to oversee all demands and prepare wide-reaching reforms.

On 8 February, a group of Ivorian Special Forces in the south-eastern town of Adiaké, which housed the army barracks of these elite units, took to the streets and fired into the air. These protests were widely seen to emulate the January mutinies, with the intention of attaining a similar deal of a one-off sum to compensate for unpaid salaries. Following talks with the army leadership, the mutinying Special Forces accepted a return to barracks, with a promise that the government would oversee a wide-ranging restructuring of the armed forces.

New mutinies erupted on 11 May in Bouaké, spreading to Abidjan, when some of the payments promised to the former rebels within the armed forces had failed to materialise. A new agreement was reached on 15 May, with a new promise that the equivalent of around € 11,000 would be paid to each soldier, but the agreement did not succeed in appeasing all parties in the mutinies. On 24 May, four people were killed in a confrontation between police officers and ex-combatants from the fafn who were among the approximately 6,000 fighters that had not been integrated into the Ivorian armed forces, and who claimed similar financial compensation for their past services to Ouattara during the 2010–11 post-electoral crisis.

Although it was the outstanding payment of salaries and other aspects of the conditions of service that motivated the mutinies within the armed forces, the government’s lack of control over certain factions within the army reflected a broader pattern of a divided Ivorian polity post-conflict. The mutinies exposed the underlying three-way split within the army between former fafn combatants, soldiers loyal to Ouattara, and those loyal to former president Laurent Gbagbo, reflecting a broader pattern of political animosity that became clearer during the year. The new chief of staff, General Sekou Toure, articulated these divisions within the armed forces on 31 May, during a visit to the troops behind the January mutinies in Bouaké. Toure, appointed on 9 January after the initial mutinies, stated that reconciliation between these three factions within the armed forces was necessary for a genuine integration of the former fafn fighters.

In terms of the underlying patterns of political animosity, speculation about growing tensions between former rebel leader Guillaume Soro and the president dominated national media throughout the year, with suggestions that the 2020 elections would see these two central characters in Ivorian politics become increasingly competitive. Although both Ouattara and Soro insisted that their collaboration was as strong as ever, their supporters exchanged accusations throughout the year. Soro’s supporters accused the president of having pushed for constitutional reforms in order to exclude Soro from the presidential race. Ouattara was also accused of having purged the security forces and public authorities of known Soro sympathisers. Finally, many saw the arrest in mid-May of Soro’s right hand man, Souleymane Kamagaté Koné, also known as ‘Soul-to-Soul’, as an indirect attack by the president on Soro. Koné was eventually charged with high treason, after a weapons cache was discovered in a villa belonging to him in Bouaké. In an open letter posted on Soro’s website, Koné – who held the title of Chief of Protocol for the Speaker of Parliament – claimed that his arrest was planned by the president to get to Soro, and suggested that it was meant to prevent Soro from running for president in 2020.

Supporters of President Ouattara, as well as some external observers, estimated that Soro had staged the military mutinies as a show of force, demonstrating his control over former fafn fighters within the armed forces. Such commentaries also emphasised that Soro’s supporters extended to the former civilian branch of the fn, and that many former fn officials had been integrated into the ‘Rassemblement des Républicains’ (rdr), strengthening Soro further.

The building tension within the ruling coalition, the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (rhdp), also included former president Henri Konan Bédié, whose party, the ‘Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire’ (pdci), had allegedly been promised the right to appoint the coalition’s unified presidential candidate for the 2020 elections. The tensions within the rhdp also reflected the ongoing negotiations around Ouattara’s proposal to transform the coalition into a unified party. The indications by the end of the year that the two main parties of the rhdp, Ouattara’s rdr and Bédié’s pdci, would contest the 2018 senatorial elections individually, rather than as a unified coalition, suggested that the unification of the two was not on the immediate horizon.

In addition to the high-level political tussles and continuous mutinies, domestic politics continued to be challenged by localised clashes in the south-western cocoa producing regions, primarily due to disagreements over access to cultivable land. Land-related conflicts had plagued Côte d’Ivoire for decades, and had been central to the build-up of the armed conflict in the early 2000s. They were exacerbated by the persistent contractions within national land tenure legislation, as well as the deliberate exploitation of these tensions by political actors on local, regional and national levels. In mid-October, seven people were killed and several thousand fled their homes during clashes over a 9,000 ha cocoa plantation outside the western town of Guiglo in the Cavally region. The clashes only ended when the security forces intervened. This incident was the most violent of a series of confrontations in the same region.

On 28 March, the former first lady, Simone Gbagbo was acquitted of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Ivorian criminal trial court (‘cour d’assises’) in Abidjan, due to irregularities in the proceedings and lack of evidence. Although the icc had indicted her following the 2010–11 post-electoral crisis, the Ivorian authorities had refused to transfer her to The Hague, where the trials of her husband, Laurent Gbagbo, and his close collaborator, Charles Blé Goudé, were still on-going at the end of the year.

The Ivorian Special Investigative and Examination Cell had indicted several high-ranking officers from the fafn who had fought against the Gbagbo regime in 2010–11 but none of them appeared in court during the year. Indeed, on 26 January, some of the indicted officers received promotions, raising concerns that their cases would be unlikely to go to trial. The icc continued its investigation into suspected crimes committed by pro-Ouattara forces but were still to issue arrest warrants at the end of the year. The lack of progress in the prosecution of crimes committed during the post-electoral crisis, particularly on the side of the forces loyal to Ouattara, continued to inspire fears among Gbagbo supporters and international observers alike of relative impunity and a lack of transitional justice under Ouattara’s leadership.

Foreign Affairs

Despite concerns over the escalation of domestic instability, international confidence in the consolidation of peace remained strong. On 30 June, the un Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (onuci) ended its mandate after a 13-year presence as the primary peacekeeping mission since the failed coup d’état in September 2002. Although the dismantling of unoci coincided with the upsurge of mutinies within the armed forces, leading some observers to raise concerns of renewed destabilisation in the absence of the un peacekeepers, the departure confirmed the overall impression of a gradual normalisation of the country’s post-conflict political landscape. The unsc confirmed this assessment in a joint statement. Meanwhile, French troops remained in the country under the mandate of a permanent military base, charged with supporting the national consolidation of peace after the 2010–11 armed conflict, but also with a role in military operations in other parts of the continent, such as the anti-terror operations in the Sahel region.

In May, the Ivorian armed forces contributed 150 troops to the peacekeeping and anti-terror operations under the un Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (minusma), established by unsc Resolution 2100 of 25 April 2013 to support the country’s political stabilisation following the military coup of 21 March 2012. minusma’s forces totalled 11,267 in August, and Côte d’Ivoire’s commitment may be seen as an intention to play a more significant regional diplomatic role. Some analysts suggested that investing in similar deployments could be part of a strategy to alleviate the divisions within the Ivorian armed forces and facilitate the envisioned security sector reforms by providing new challenges for restless soldiers and, potentially, professionalising the army further through its involvement in UN-lead peacekeeping operations.

On 2 June, the un General Assembly elected Côte d’Ivoire as one of the non-permanent members of the unsc for the 2018–19 two-year term, along with Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Peru and Poland. The coinciding of the end of the unoci mission with the election of Côte d’Ivoire to the unsc was not lost on President Ouattara, who stated that the appointment marked a “new phase in our strategy of diplomatic repositioning”.

Côte d’Ivoire’s positive standing with international actors was further illustrated by Ouattara’s warm reception by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on 31 August. Macron vowed to work to strengthen bilateral cooperation between France and Côte d’Ivoire, emphasising sustainable development, education and security as three key priorities for France. He also stated that the planned eu-au summit in Abidjan in November would be an opportunity to strengthen the partnership between Africa and Europe, with a particular focus on the youth.

On 29–30 November, Ouattara hosted the high-profile EU-AU summit; the fifth triennial summit within the framework of the Joint Africa-eu Strategy, adopted at the inaugural summit in Lisbon in 2007. The theme of the Abidjan summit, ‘Investing in Youth for Accelerated Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development’, was an ambitious agenda to invest in the future of the continent’s youth, highlighting sustainable employment opportunities, echoing the forward-looking optimism that had characterised Emmanuel Macron’s statements in Paris in August. In addition to a reaffirmation of the principles of the joint strategy, a new eu external investment plan for Africa was presented. The plan’s primary goal was to “trigger € 44 billion investments in Africa by 2020, thereby creating new job opportunities for young people across the African continent”. A more specific roadmap for achieving this goal was not achieved.

The Mediterranean migration crisis continued to dominate eu-au relations, as it had consistently in the aftermath of the 2014 European refugee crisis. Ivorian nationals had been amongst the casualties and detainees for several years and more than 13,000 Ivorian migrants arrived on eu territory by sea during the year. At the same time, the majority of Ivorian migrants continued to move to countries within West Africa, such as Ghana, Senegal and – increasingly – Burkina Faso, or to travel by air to destinations further afield, primarily the us and Europe but in increasing numbers towards the Middle East, China and Australia.

Socioeconomic Developments

Côte d’Ivoire continued its impressive economic performance of 2016, when the imf classed it as the fastest growing economy. The estimated gdp growth rate for 2017 was 7.6%, which continued the trend of a slight decline over the past five years but still represented one of the ten fastest growing economies worldwide. This continued growth was credited in large part to the fiscal and monetary policies of the administration, coupled with on-going reforms designed to improve conditions for the private sector and facilitate mutually beneficial collaboration between public and private actors. Despite this positive outlook overall, both structural and short-term factors raised concerns that the Ivorian economy could face tougher times ahead. Most fundamentally, inequality indexes continued to rank Côte d’Ivoire among the least inclusive economies worldwide, with a Human Development Index ranking of 171 out of 188, and the same negative ranking in the gender inequality index. The persistent lack of gender equality prompted the World Bank to focus its fifth report on the Ivorian economy on this theme, with the alluring subtitle, ‘How Côte d’Ivoire could make at least 6 billion dollars’.

In the expanding energy sector, average crude oil output was estimated at 54,000 b/d, representing an increase of 8% from an average of 50,000 b/d in 2016, while average gas production slowed significantly during the year. Productivity within Côte d’Ivoire’s main agricultural sectors was encouraging. Cotton production increased slightly in the 2016–17 growing season, by 5.7%, from 310,177 tonnes in 2015–16 to 328,090 tonnes, as reported by the chairman of the ‘Conseil du Coton et de l’Anacarde’ (cca), Mamadou Bamba. Cotton production generated approximately CFAfr 87 bn (or € 133 m) in revenue, which, due to a more favourable bargaining price, represented an increase of more than 12% from CFAfr 77.2 bn (€ 116 m) during the 2015–16 growing season. The outlook for the sector remained positive, as a public support fund worth CFAfr 21 bn (€ 32 m) was established to weather unforeseen crises during the growing season. cca Director-General Adama Coulibaly stated that this support fund would assist the cotton-producing sector in becoming self-reliant and independent of government subsidies. As an illustration of the optimism surrounding cotton production, Bamba estimated that production would reach its pre-war levels of 400,000 tonnes within the next two growing seasons.

In terms of productivity, even the Ivorian cocoa production showed positive signs, as the world’s largest producer increased its harvest by 28.5% to a record 2.15 m tonnes for the 2016–17 growing season. However, the continued reliance on cocoa production as the cornerstone of the economy had proven historically to expose the Ivorian economy to the fluctuations of the global market, risking not only drops in immediate revenue but also the secondary effects of increased smuggling of cocoa beans to neighbouring Ghana, where state subsidies ensured price stability for its producers, leading in turn to a fall in Ivorian revenues. These dynamics threatened to hit the Ivorian economy once more in 2017, as prices dropped from around $ 3,000 per tonne in August 2016 to around $ 2,000 in March 2017; a reduction of approximately 40%. This dramatic fall led the Ivorian administration to cut its guaranteed price to cocoa farmers by 36% in April, which in turn – in addition to the economic consequences facing cocoa producers – led to concerns that as much as 20% of the crop, or approximately 400,000 tonnes, might be lost to smuggling. Specifically, the Ivorian regulating body for cocoa and coffee prices, the ‘Conseil du Cafe-Cacao’ (ccc) urged the administration in neighbouring Ghana to lower its prices to reduce the incentives to Ivorian producers to smuggle their crops across the border.

According to President Ouattara, the 40% drop in cocoa prices led to a net loss of CFAfr 150 bn, or roughly € 230 m, at a time where the military mutinies and strikes among public sector workers were creating uncertainty about continued productivity. The government’s promises to remunerate an ever-increasing number of mutineers with one-off payments seemed to put additional pressure on the economy, with Ouattara eventually stating that this combination of challenges had put the government in “an impossible situation”. In April, the government reduced its annual budget by 10% and in May, it announced a $ 1.1 bn loss in export earnings. Despite lowering prices, its stabilisation fund had diminished by CFAfr 300 bn (€ 46 m) as of October.

Ironically, these dramatic fluctuations occurred while the International Cocoa Organization was completing the transfer of its headquarters from London to Abidjan in a stated effort to bring the organisation closer to the realities of its largest producers. As the two leading producers on the global market, Côte d’Ivoire and its eastern neighbour, Ghana, account for two-thirds of the world market, and the sudden drop in cocoa prices led to intense activity between the ccc and its Ghanaian equivalent, Cocobod (Ghana Cocoa Board). President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana was reluctant to go back on his electoral promise to ensure domestic cocoa prices, which would have provided a short-term measure to stem smuggling from Côte d’Ivoire to the more profitable Ghanaian market. However, the two parties seemed to be working towards a closer collaboration in order to impose sterner demands with regard to international terms of trade. During an official visit to Côte d’Ivoire in early May, Akufo-Addo insisted that a change was needed to the way the world’s two most important cocoa producing countries had left their producers in the hands of investors outside the continent.

On 16 October, Ouattara returned the courtesy with a two-day official visit to Accra (Ghana), when the two presidents confirmed their commitment to finding solutions resistant to the volatility of the cocoa producing sector, citing two avenues for structural reform. First, there was talk throughout the latter half of the year of revitalising a long-standing idea of establishing a cocoa sector equivalent to the crude oil sector’s opec; in other words, an association of the world’s primary cocoa producers intended to give them a more decisive role in determining the global terms of trade. Second, the intentions of both leaders with regard to investing more in domestic processing industries primarily focussed on producing cocoa paste and butter. The meeting was also seen as a diplomatic gesture in response to the verdict of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which had ruled in favour of Ghana on 24 September in a case regarding rights to offshore crude oil extraction. Following the verdict, both parties were unequivocal in their stated commitment to respect its findings and continue to strengthen the partnership between the two countries.

By the end of the year, immense challenges were still towering over the Ivorian authorities. Nevertheless, there was reason for optimism on account of a number of positive development indicators in Côte d’Ivoire’s macro-economic performance. The new National Development Plan (ndp) adopted for 2016–20 envisioned the ascension of Côte d’Ivoire to the status of a middle-income country by 2020 by consolidating its economic growth and sectorial reforms, and by reducing the poverty rate significantly. Added to these were the determined efforts of the Ivorian authorities to handle crises relating to the military mutinies, and the country’s cordial relationship with some key members of the international community including the Bretton Woods institutions. In April 2016, donors had pledged $ 15.4 bn in grants and loans to support the ndp. The World Bank Group committed to doubling its support over the next four years to approximately $ 5 bn. These commitments provided the Ivorian economy with some measure of counter-balance to the troubling developments in 2017.