African Studies
Utafiti: Journal of African Perspectives
Call for Papers: Utafiti is inviting you to submit your manuscript – any topic in the humanities - for consideration in the next issues.
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Côte d’Ivoire continued its overall economic post-conflict recovery, weathering the more recent storms of widespread military mutinies, public sector strikes, and the previous year’s dramatic drop in world market cocoa prices. While government responses to these recent crises generally proved effective, the year soon posed its own challenges as the ruling political coalition came undone in the increasingly dramatic run-up to the 2020 presidential elections. During a turbulent political year, president Alassane Ouattara dissolved and then reinstated the government, lost the support of his main ally, former president Henri Konan Bédié, and sowed further doubts regarding his intentions to run for a third term in 2020. Despite these dramatic developments, which also included parliamentary and public mobilisation against the composition of the Independent Electoral Commission, however, political mobilisation was generally peaceful, and grievances were addressed through the appropriate state institutions. Some concerns remained about the legal procedures in the aftermath of the 2010–11 post-electoral crisis, which had led to renewed armed conflict and the imprisonment of former president Laurent Gbagbo. Mr Gbagbo’s trial at the icc was still ongoing at year’s end, but anticipation among his most loyal supporters, as well as among his most ardent adversaries, added another dimension to the growing tensions within the Ivorian political class.