Domestic Politics

The political year began in dramatic fashion, with the announcement on 15 January by the International Criminal Court (icc) that former president Laurent Gbagbo and his long-time ‘street general’ and former youth minister, Charles Blé Goudé, had been acquitted of four counts of crimes against humanity. The charges were limited to the conduct of the two men during the so-called post-electoral crisis between 16 December 2010 and 12 April 2011, and centred on their responsibility in inciting violence against civilians in the aftermath of the 2010 presidential elections. In its statement, icc Trial Chamber 1 concluded by majority that the prosecutor had failed to establish that such intent was present, or that public speeches by the accused at political rallies had amounted to ordering, soliciting, or inducing the alleged crimes. In early February, Laurent Gbagbo was granted entry to Belgium, with the Belgian authorities agreeing to host the former president under the restrictions specified by the icc. These restrictions included confinement to the municipality of residence in Belgium and a requirement to report weekly to the local authorities, pending the appeal of the verdict.

The icc cases against Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Blé Goudé continued to incite reactions in Côte d’Ivoire among supporters and opponents alike, with a key underlying question remaining about what role the two men would play in the 2020 presidential elections. Given, however, that they both received substantial prison sentences from the Ivorian courts in absentia, their return to Côte d’Ivoire before the elections seemed doubtful and their political influence seemed more likely to remain one of influencing from afar rather than of seeing Laurent Gbagbo return as a presidential candidate.

Overall, the preparations for the 2020 elections dominated the political agenda in Côte d’Ivoire throughout the year. On 21 January, the first meeting was held between the representatives of 15 political parties to initiate the revision of the Ivorian Independent Electoral Commission. In November 2016, following the 2015 elections, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR) ruled that the Ivorian electoral commission had “violated its obligation to establish an independent and impartial electoral body” under the ecowas Democracy Protocol. The revisory process created heated debate throughout the first half of the year, with opposition and civil society representatives – including the organisation ‘l’Action pour la promotion des droits de l’homme’ (Action for the Promotion of Human Rights, or apdh), which filed the original complaint with the AfCHPR – insisting on a revision of the entire structure of the electoral commission, while the government insisted on a revision of the composition of the existing structure.

Despite objections, the government’s proposal was voted through the two chambers of parliament on 30 July by a resounding majority, reflecting the political dominance of the ruling coalition, which was consolidated in the poorly attended 2018 parliamentary elections. By this vote, the new Independent Electoral Commission was reduced from 17 to 15 members, and the distribution was changed to consist of three delegates from the ruling party, three from the opposition, six from civil society, one representative from the Superior Council of the Judiciary, one appointed by the president, and one appointed by the minister of the interior. The most significant change in the composition of the electoral commission, signed into law by the president on 6 August, was arguably the reduction in the representation of the ruling party from eight to three representatives. But objections were raised particularly against the presence of representatives of the political parties altogether, which was argued to compromise the objectivity of the electoral body. The opposition’s hopes of raising international support against the new electoral commission suffered an initial blow when Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission (auc), congratulated Côte d’Ivoire for implementing the revision in accordance with the AfCHPR ruling. The new electoral commission was sworn in on 27 September, with the two main opposition parties – Henri Konan Bédié’s ‘Parti démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire’ (Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire, or pdci) and the ‘Front populaire ivorien’ (Ivorian Popular Front, or fpi) faction loyal to Laurent Gbagbo – and a notable section of civil society having refused to participate in the nomination of its delegates.

In addition to the legal and technical preparations and negotiations in anticipation of the 2020 elections, the proclivity of President Alassane Ouattara towards his own candidacy continued to raise speculation and concern among domestic and external observers alike. After the ratification of a new Ivorian constitution in 2016, President Ouattara had insisted that he was constitutionally assured the right to run for a third (and fourth) term in office, while his opponents argued that the two-term limit still applied despite the constitutional revision. In his 2020 New Year address to the nation, on 31 December, Ouattara assured the Ivorian people that nothing would disturb the peace as long as he was at the head of the country. Seemingly intended as a reassurance that the 2020 elections would be conducted in a fair and peaceful manner, the statement raised renewed concerns that the president might be turning towards a more authoritarian line in order to prevent instability. Such concerns were fuelled by a rise in reported human rights abuses, with Amnesty International claiming that the Ivorian authorities were becoming increasingly abusive against social activists, journalists, and members of the political opposition.

In September, Ouattara announced a minor reshuffling of the government, as a part of the consolidation of the newly formed party the ‘Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix’ (Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace, or rhdp), which was intended as a consolidation of the ruling coalition into a single party but proved to reanimate old grievances between the two strongmen of the alliance, Alassane Ouattara and former president Henri Konan Bédié.

The three major political parties all at times underwent dramatic reconfigurations in anticipation of the 2020 elections, with the pdci, led by Bédié, seeing many of its senior representatives forming a new movement: the ‘pdci-renaissance’. This new movement was founded by vice president Daniel Kablan Duncan and included several ministers and other senior officials in the Ouattara government. It signalled the effects of the 2018 break-up of the ruling rhdp coalition which had seen the historic rivals Alassane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bédié join forces against incumbent Laurent Gbagbo in 2010. The fracturing of the alliance exposed new fault lines within the followings of both leaders, with Bédié’s pdci losing supporters to Ouattara’s revamped rhdp party and Ouattara losing supporters to his former prime minister, Guillaume Soro, who announced his own presidential bid on 18 October. In a similar fashion, the main opposition party, the fpi of former president Laurent Gbagbo, continued its splintering into different factions, with the faction loyal to its current party president, Pascal Affi N’Guessan, struggling to convince supporters that he could carry the party forward in the absence of its former leader.

In addition to these formal changes in party structures and political alliances, a series of unexpected meetings among the main political rivals led to speculations and uncertainty about the make-up of the political field going into the campaign season of mid-2020. Most prominently, the former arch-rivals Laurent Gbagbo and Henri Konan Bédié met for the first time in nine years on 29 July in Brussels, seemingly to explore the possibilities of a joint alliance against Ouattara’s rhdp. An equally unlikely meeting was held in The Hague on 24 November between former rebel leader Soro and Charles Blé Goudé. With Guillaume Soro, otherwise assumed to be the heir to Ouattara’s rhdp, joining the growing opposition against the president, these personal meetings illustrated the race among the top contenders to take the leading role in uniting the divided Ivorian opposition against the ruling party in the elections.

Henri Konan Bédié, who had famously joined forces with his former arch-rival Alassane Ouattara in the 2010 elections in order to oust incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, seemed to be most successful in rallying support even among former political rivals. On 19 October, he organised a ‘giga-meeting’ in Yamoussoukro, the administrative capital and birthplace of Côte d’Ivoire’s first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny. The meeting rallied 300,000 spectators, and included several opposition parties. An apt illustration of the adaptability and pragmatism of the Ivorian political class, these meetings and rallies represented yet another reconfiguration of unlikely political alliances, with former enemies joining forces around a common cause. In the 1990s, this willingness to base political alliances on common interests rather than ideological convictions had seen Bédié and Gbagbo find common cause in questioning the nationality of Alassane Ouattara, which sidelined Ouattara in the 2000 elections controversially claimed by Laurent Gbagbo.

Despite all these political manoeuvrings, the Ivorian political contest remained dominated by a limited circle of long-standing rivals: president Alassane Ouattara; ex-president Henri Konan Bédié; former rebel leader turned prime minister Guillaume Soro; and Pascal Affi N’Guessan, continuing his year-long struggle to step out of Laurent Gbagbo’s shadow as leader of the fpi. In this way, the four principal signatories of the 2007 peace agreement (Ouattara, Bédié, Soro, and Gbagbo) continued to loom large over Ivorian electoral politics, with President Ouattara’s conduct towards his political rivals dominating the debates among both domestic and international observers. In November, Ouattara sparked renewed concerns about his intentions when he stated in an interview that he would present his candidacy if “others of his generation” did so: a warning intended primarily for former president Henri Konan Bédié, who left the ruling alliance in 2018. At the same time, Ouattara was also suggesting that a constitutional amendment before the 2020 elections might reinstate an age limit for the presidency at 75 years, which would bar not only Bédié but also Outtara himself and Laurent Gbagbo from running – a move that would indicate that his call to allow a “new generation” of Ivorian politicians to lead was not just empty rhetoric intended to sideline his main rivals.

In December, a warrant was issued for Guillaume Soro’s arrest on charges of plotting against the Ivorian state and money laundering. Soro, who had been reluctant to return to the country following a visit to France in May, reacted by stating emphatically that he, like the French general Charles de Gaulle, would continue his fight against the regime from exile and retain his candidacy in the 2020 presidential elections. Echoing the growing concerns of international observers, Soro stated on 26 December via Twitter: “Only in a dictatorship are arrest warrants issued against electoral candidates”. On this note, the year ended with uncertainty regarding the conduct of the major political players and the reactions of the Ivorian electorate in the lead-up to the 2020 elections. Among the most decisive questions that remained unanswered at the end of the year were whether Alassane Ouattara would disregard the domestic and international reluctance to see him run for a third term in office, and whether his political opponents would form a common front against him.

Foreign Affairs

On 17 December, Côte d’Ivoire ended its two-year term as a non-permanent member on the unsc. In taking stock of the Ivorian achievements on the council, foreign minister Marcel Amon-Tanoh emphasised engagements relating to “peace and dialogue”, listing efforts in relation to peacekeeping and post-conflict recovery in the Central African Republic, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea. As elaborated by Côte d’Ivoire’s ambassador to the un, Kacou Houadja Léon Adom, these efforts were informed by the country’s own experiences with armed conflict and post-conflict recovery. Although Ivorian officials also emphasised their efforts relating to the increasing destabilisation of the Sahel region, it was notable that the Ivorian term in the unsc was devoted to involvements farther from home. On a 14–16 February mission to West Africa Adom hosted a delegation from the unsc during their visit to Côte d’Ivoire, and emphasised the Ivorian experience of post-conflict recovery and reconciliation as a source of best practice for other conflict-affected countries. Again, the more challenging aspects of the Ivorian post-conflict trajectory – particularly pressing in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections – may have been too close to home for Ivorian officials to broach.

Overall, the 2020 elections dominated Côte d’Ivoire’s international collaborations and dialogues in 2019, with a renewed commitment of the United Nations to assist the electoral process. The un responded to an invitation by the Ivorian authorities to collaborate with the newly reformed Independent Electoral Commission in the preparations for the 2020 vote. Alassane Ouattara’s November statement that he would run for a third term in office, should his historic rivals present their candidature, raised international concerns of a democratic backslide and a growing risk of violence in the run-up to and aftermath of the elections, but observers also noted that these concerns remained quite muted, with no major international actors stating outright condemnations of the president’s intentions.

Perhaps the most noticeable passivity in this regard was that of France’s Emmanuel Macron, who met repeatedly with Alassane Ouattara throughout the year but avoided any official statements about Ouattara’s unclear intentions. The two met in Paris on 9 July, and again on 19 November as Ouattara was en route to the G20 summit in Japan. Macron then visited Côte d’Ivoire on 19–20 December, offering an early Christmas dinner to the French troops stationed at the military base in Port-Bouët, near Abidjan’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny International Airport. At the top of the agenda for this meeting, as it had been in the earlier meetings between the two presidents, was Macron’s efforts to summon increased regional commitment to anti-jihadist engagements in the Sahel region. In April, Côte d’Ivoire had committed to deploying an additional 650 troops to the United Nations Mission in Mali (minusma), quadrupling its existing contribution of 150 troops and reaffirming its position as a key regional actor in peacekeeping and conflict mitigation.

Macron and Ouattara were also at the head of the ongoing preparations for the revisions of the West African regional currency, the cfa franc, which was scheduled to be replaced by a new currency, the Eco, during 2020. The immediate effects of this revision would primarily be political rather than economic, in that the new Eco currency would be tied more unequivocally to the euro, breaking the cfa franc’s historic bond with the French economy. In the initial phase of the transition towards the Eco, the Central Bank of West African States (bceao) would withdraw its reserves from the French national reserve, while all French representatives involved in the management of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (uemoa) would be replaced. The Eco currency was initially planned to encompass the eight members of this monetary union – Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo – with a second phase expanding the monetary union to the entire ecowas region.

Socioeconomic Developments

Sustaining its post-conflict recovery, the Ivorian economy continued its impressive overall performance with a projected growth rate above 7% for the eighth consecutive year, which kept the country’s place as one of the ten fastest-growing economies worldwide. While the trend during this period had been one of gradual decline – from 10.1% in 2012 to 7.5% in 2019 – the growth rate was still highly encouraging and the gradual drop was interpreted by several observers as an indication of a gradual normalisation process after the country’s 2010–11 post-electoral crisis. In addition to consistent performance in the country’s main agricultural sectors, the World Bank cited stable food prices, lower telecommunications prices, and a modest increase in fuel prices as some of the central factors in ensuring the remarkable economic stability. The country’s budget deficit was also praised by the imf for stabilising at around 3% of gdp, in accordance with the regional targets of umeoa.

Concerns were raised, however, about the potential impact of a destabilising outcome to the 2020 presidential elections, and to a lesser extent the political instability in the Sahel region, and more fundamentally about the persistent economic inequality in the country, which maintained its less than impressive ranking as 165th out of 189 countries on the un Human Development Index – a slight improvement on the previous year. Among the most detracting factors were, as in past years, a life expectancy of approximately 57 years, three years lower than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, and the fact that almost half of the population continued to live below the national poverty line of € 1.10 per day. Furthermore, the government’s revenue from domestic transactions remained among the lowest worldwide, despite reforms to facilitate tax procedures and tax collection, for example through the introduction of digital platforms. The World Bank observed that an increase in vat collection would be needed to boost tax revenue, as a way of diversifying the government’s revenue base. Finally, in terms of Côte d’Ivoire’s overall socioeconomic performance the lack of achievements in relation to gender equality were particularly concerning, with the Gender Inequality Index actually posting a drop in ranking from 157th in 2018 to 165th in 2019.

In terms of a more delimited assessment of the Ivorian economy, state policies aimed at creating more favourable conditions for the private sector – a hallmark of the Ouattara presidency – continued to generate positive results, reflected in an increase in investments from 13.8% of gdp in 2018 to 16.5% in 2019. These advances were also clear in the improvement in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking, from 122nd in 2018 to 110th in 2019 out of 190 ranked countries, maintaining Côte d’Ivoire’s position as one of the top ten improving countries worldwide for private sector investments. Underlying structural weaknesses persisted, however, primarily with regard to corruption – with a slight improvement in the country’s ranking by Transparency International from 108th to 106th out of 176 countries ranked – and with regard to land ownership legislation.

Continued calls for diversification and modernisation of the agricultural sector dominated most economic reviews, with the World Bank observing that while productivity in agriculture was gradually declining due to state policies directed at strengthening other sectors of the economy, and while the sector’s contribution to gdp had declined steadily since 2012 to 14% in 2019, more than half of the population continued to rely on agriculture as their primary livelihood. The two central objectives of the structural changes needed in agriculture were argued to be a shift towards more environmentally sustainable and cost-effective techniques, on the one hand, and a shift towards increased processing of primary produce, particularly in cocoa and palm oil production, on the other.

Côte d’Ivoire remained the world’s largest exporter of cashew nuts, but production fell by 17% to 634,641 tonnes in 2019 after as much as 200,000 tonnes was smuggled out of the country, according to Adama Coulibaly, the director-general of the Ivorian Cotton and Cashew Council (ccc). Coulibaly argued that production would be able to reach an output of 800,000 tonnes in 2020 if cross-border smuggling to neighbouring Ghana could be stemmed. Although the Council introduced a slight increase in the minimum buying price, from 375 cfa francs (CFAfr) (€ 57) per kilo to CFAfr 400 (€ 0.60) per kilo, producers argued that the higher buying price in Ghana, at around CFAfr 600 (€ 0.92), would continue to encourage smuggling.

Ivorian crude oil production declined for the second year, from an average of around 52,000 barrels per day in 2018 to around 49,000 barrels per day in 2019. At the same time, through its intention to open up 13 new offshore oil extraction blocks and the investment in new gas-to-power facilities, Côte d’Ivoire was lauded as a new energy leader in West Africa. The Ivorian gas-to-energy strategy was commended not only for its potential to inspire an African transition to cheaper and cleaner energy but also for breaking new ground in the transportation sector, with the Abidjan Transport Company (sotra) receiving 50 buses powered by compressed natural gas (cng) at the end of 2018.

Ivorian cocoa production maintained its level at 2,200,000 tonnes from the 2018/19 to the 2019/20 season, which accounted for around 40% of the global market, and a global selling price of around $ 2,500 per tonne (the New York exchange being the global point of reference for cocoa prices). The stability in total produce, however, did not preclude intense political activity around the cocoa sector. Since the dramatic drop in world market prices in 2016/17, although the two countries have been competitors in the cocoa sector for decades, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana – the world’s largest exporters of cocoa, responsible for approximately two-thirds of the global market – continued their efforts to coordinate the selling conditions for local producers and leverage the international terms of trade. On 26 March 2018, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana signed the Abidjan Declaration, which outlined a joint strategy for harmonising selling prices on cocoa in order to combat smuggling between the two countries; guaranteeing a state-sanctioned minimum price to stabilise the conditions for local producers; and increasing collaboration in order to influence world market prices and selling conditions.

Having focused primarily on consolidating domestic conditions and bilateral standards the previous year, the two countries proceeded to target the international market in 2019. Most notably, on 12 June, Ivorian and Ghanaian authorities issued a joint ultimatum to global cocoa buyers: a complete halt of all sales from the 2020/21 harvest (which is purchased well in advance) unless a minimum price of $ 2,600 per tonne could be guaranteed. This ultimatum was argued by its authors to be necessary in order to improve the selling price for local producers in a long-term and sustainable manner.

Although the impetus of the 12 June ultimatum was towards the external conditions for a more sustainable and equitable cocoa sector moving forward, the potential improvement of the national buying price by up to 40% also posed domestic challenges for the Ivorian authorities, for example in how to disincentivise renewed overproduction, which was arguably a main contributing factor to the plummeting world market prices in 2016. The implementation of the Abidjan Declaration, in other words, continued to rely on a delicate balance between domestic and international interests and strategies. Following a series of meetings with most of the major chocolate companies and traders, the Ivorian and Ghanaian cocoa boards announced on 16 July that they had agreed to reverse their decision to suspend sales for the 2020/21 season, after having reached an agreement to introduce a mechanism to ensure producers a minimum gain of $ 400 per tonne in situations where world prices dropped below $ 2,600 per tonne.

Despite these positive achievements, the Ivorian cocoa sector was still argued by external observers to be facing considerable challenges in transitioning to a more sustainable mode of production in order to avoid further soil erosion. In addition to an annual drought, more structural challenges remained in combating the swollen shoot disease which continued to impede production, leading both the Ivorian and the Ghanaian authorities to escalate the cutting down of sick trees in order to stem further infection. A further challenge remained in offering a sustainable strategy for eradicating child labour in the sector. The issue of the use of child labour in cocoa production resurfaced on global political agendas as us senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ron Wyden issued a call on 16 July to the us Customs and Border Protection agency (cbp) to block all cocoa imports from Côte d’Ivoire, following an investigation conducted by the ‘Washington Post’ into the working conditions in Ivorian agriculture. The United States imported cocoa beans and paste worth over $ 700 m from Côte d’Ivoire in 2018, making the threat of an embargo a significant economic set-back. While not halting us imports from Côte d’Ivoire, the petition led the cbp to conduct investigations in Côte d’Ivoire in October, and as an initial response to the raised concerns, the Ivorian authorities signed an agreement with neighbouring Burkina Faso in July to facilitate the return of unaccompanied minors working in the cocoa sector. Finally, the long-standing problem of corruption and other insidious arrangements in the Ivorian cocoa sector left doubts about the real effects of these high-level agreements and negotiations.

In addition to these activities in the main sectors of the Ivorian economy, the government continued its policies of modernisation and diversification, with support from international funders and credit agencies. In June, the World Bank approved $ 300 m in credit to Côte d’Ivoire for an urban mobility project in Abidjan. In addition to supporting the city’s existing formal and informal transportation systems, the project included a Bus Rapid Transit (brt) line between the country’s most populated municipality, Yopougon, and Bingerville, located on opposite sides of the city centre and the financial district. Part of the rationale behind the investment was taken from a World Bank study published in February, according to which the poorest households in Abidjan spent an average of 20–30% of their income on transportation and 200 minutes a day using or waiting for transport. The report showed that an improvement in urban mobility in Abidjan of around 20% could lead to a gdp growth gain of about 1% per year.

The government also signed an agreement with the ifc under the World Bank’s Scaling Solar programme for two large-scale solar energy projects with a combined generation capacity of 60 mw, as part of a strategy to produce 400 mw from solar power in 2030. Côte d’Ivoire’s rate of access to electricity was already among the highest on the African continent, at around 62%, with 60% of power being produced by thermal plants and 40% from hydropower. Côte d’Ivoire continued its export of electricity to Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.