Côte d’Ivoire will hold a presidential election in October. There has been no violence yet, but President Alassane Ouattara’s decision to run a fourth time, the exclusion of the main opposition figures and an electoral system accused of bias have raised fears about whether the vote will go smoothly.
Why does it matter? Tensions are rising, as no Ivorian presidential election since 1995 has resulted in a peaceful handover of power. Sahelian states aligned with Russia might want to see Côte d’Ivoire, one of the last countries in West Africa to retain strong ties with France and the European Union, turn toward Moscow.
What should be done? To ease electoral frictions, the Ivorian government should organise a formal dialogue with the opposition as soon as possible, and the parties whose candidate has been excluded should resist the temptation to boycott.
Executive Summary
Côte d’Ivoire will hold a presidential election in October. Races for the top office in this country, which boasts the largest economy in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, have been fraught for the past three decades: no election since 1995 has resulted in a peaceful transfer of power. Many are concerned that the 2025 vote will not go smoothly, either.
As in the 2020 poll, when violence left 85 people dead, long-time President Alassane Ouattara is bucking critics to run again, key opposition figures have been taken off the ballot, the fairness of the electoral system is contested and identity-based rhetoric is resurgent.
Changing geopolitical circumstances, moreover, could add complications that did not exist five years ago. Several states in the nearby Sahel that were then aligned with Paris have since turned toward Moscow; they could wish to see Côte d’Ivoire, one of the last countries in West Africa that remains close to France and the European Union, follow in their footsteps.
To ease electoral tensions, the Ivorian government should organise a formal political dialogue with the opposition as soon as possible, and the parties whose candidate has been excluded should resist the temptation to leave their ballot lines empty, instead nominating someone else, if necessary.
Côte d’Ivoire has long grappled with a presidential paradox: the country is economically strong but politically vulnerable, particularly when it comes to choosing a president.
Since President Ouattara rose to power following the disputed 2010 election, the Ivorian economy has been expanding steadily, reaching an average annual growth rate of 7 per cent between 2012 and 2023, and the country has invested massively in infrastructure. The government has also reformed the army, which had long been riven by mutinies. These armed forces have succeeded since late 2021 in protecting the country from attacks by Sahelian jihadist groups.
Despite these achievements, Côte d’Ivoire’s political system remains prone to turmoil due largely to an extreme concentration of power in the presidency, the inability of the political class to make compromises and a largely unfinished process of national reconciliation after the 2010 election and the ensuing four-month war. These problems resurface every time a presidential election rolls around and could threaten the country’s stability once again.
Circumstances ahead of the October vote are much the same as they were on the eve of the 2020 election. On 29 July, President Ouattara, 83, announced his candidacy for a fourth term, which could give rise to protests similar to those that broke out five years ago.
Major opposition leaders have been excluded from the ballot – including Laurent Gbagbo of the Parti des peuples africains-Côte d’Ivoire, who was convicted on criminal charges (which he still denies) by an Ivorian court in 2018, and Tidjane Thiam, head of the Parti démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire, for a complex case of dual nationality – and their supporters could take their frustrations to the streets. The government and opposition disagree over the technical and legal conditions for the vote, and it is hardly reassuring that there is no dialogue between them.
Tensions were already sufficiently high in March to prompt the Côte d’Ivoire Catholic Bishops’ Conference to express concern about the risk of electoral unrest. The worries increased early the next month, when the three main opposition parties walked out of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI).
As in 2020, President Ouattara and his party, the Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix, are favourites in the election. They are capitalising on the government’s good economic and security record, as well as the absence of credible rivals, notably Thiam, who was considered the most serious challenger before he was barred from running.
For its part, the opposition has formed several alliances in recent months, including a “common front” uniting Thiam, Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro, a former prime minister who lives in exile, with the aim of getting themselves reinstated on the ballot. But the opposition nonetheless remains fragmented and seems incapable of putting forward alternatives for the candidates who have been excluded.
Meanwhile, debate focuses more on spats between government and opposition than on issues more crucial to the country’s future, such as the underrepresentation of young people (75 per cent of the population is under 35) in politics, the shortcomings of the education and health systems, and the inability of the justice system to deal fairly with crimes committed during the 2010-2011 crisis.
Rapid changes in Côte d’Ivoire’s foreign relations present an additional concern. Abidjan’s ties with Sahelian states now allied with Moscow are increasingly strained. Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire have been at loggerheads since Captain Ibrahim Traoré came to power in Ouagadougou in September 2022. Traoré has accused Abidjan of seeking to destabilise his regime, while the Ivorian authorities suspect Ouagadougou of conducting a vast campaign to spread disinformation about their country.
These tensions come alongside the partial disengagement of longstanding external partners, notably France, which withdrew its army units from Côte d’Ivoire in February, at a time when Russia is beefing up its embassy staff in one of the few French-speaking states in West Africa where it has not yet made inroads.
Russia’s new partners in the Sahel would be pleased to see Abidjan drawn into the Kremlin’s orbit. Moscow, which has previously interfered in elections in Europe and the Caucasus, but also in Africa, could be tempted to try to influence the outcome in Côte d’Ivoire as well.
Without measures to dampen tensions, the October election may see a repeat of the violence attending previous polls. The government bears a great deal of the responsibility for this predicament.
By standing for a fourth term, President Ouattara may incur hostility among the population, leading some, as in 2020, to stage violent demonstrations. His candidacy will likely appear especially anachronistic to many young people, who are already under-represented in Ivorian politics and may become even less interested in the election.
In order to move toward the “peaceful” and “transparent” poll that Ouattara called for in his 29 July speech, the Ivorian government should relaunch a formal dialogue with the opposition as soon as possible to encourage the parties that left the CEI to rejoin its Central Commission; it should also examine the possibility of revising the ballot to allow certain deregistered candidates to stand.
If it does not take this second step, the parties whose candidate has been disqualified should replace them with someone else by 26 August, the deadline for submitting candidacies, rather than boycott the vote. With three months to go before the election, both government and opposition in Côte d’Ivoire can still take action to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
- International Crisis Group
