Ivory

Country awaits final presidential election result that could see 83-year-old Alassane Ouattara sworn in for fourth term.

Former Ivory Coast commerce minister Jean-Louis Billon has conceded defeat to incumbent Alassane Ouattara in the country’s presidential election, as early partial results show the latter with a strong lead nationwide.

“The initial results place the incumbent President, Mr Alassane Ouattara, in the lead, designating him the winner of this presidential election,” Billon said in a statement, congratulating the president on Sunday.

Billon was among four opposition candidates running against Ouattara, the 83-year-old former International Monetary Fund executive who is seeking a fourth term in office.

Billon failed to secure the endorsement of the opposition PDCI party, led by Tidjane Thiam – the ex-Credit Suisse chief who was barred from the ballot.

Earlier in the day, the country’s Independent Electoral Commission began announcing partial results from Saturday’s polls on national television.

“The results of 20 departments or divisions are being read out,” and 10 or 11 departments remain, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris said, reporting from the economic capital, Abidjan on Sunday. This included diaspora votes from six countries.

“This is the most critical stage of this election, where results from various polling booths and centres are being collated and announced,” Idris said.

“From the initial results, it’s clear the incumbent is leading by a wide margin in many of the areas so far.”

Nearly nine million Ivorians were eligible to vote in an election marked by a divided opposition further hobbled by the barring of two leading candidates.

“Ivorians are watching closely what happens here,” said Idris. “And the result of this election will determine whether or not the streets will remain calm.”

So far, the streets of Abidjan have remained quiet and calm, Idris reported, “apart from reports of scattered violence in other parts of the country that has led to two deaths”.

“Security patrols are all over the place; at least 44,000 security personnel have been deployed for this election before, during, and after, in case trouble breaks out,” he added.

Ouattara’s leading rivals – former President Laurent Gbagbo and Thiam – were barred from standing, Gbagbo for a criminal conviction and Thiam for acquiring French citizenship.

This led to pre-election protests and calls from some quarters for a boycott of the polls.

While an official voter turnout is not yet known, the president of the election commission, Ibrahime Coulibaly-Kuibiert, earlier put the figure at about 50 percent.

Polling stations in Abidjan and historically pro-opposition areas in the south and west were nearly empty, the AFP news agency reported. Meanwhile, it said voters turned out in large numbers in the north, where Ouattara had most of his support.

With key contenders out of the race, Ouattara was the overwhelming favourite.

Saturday’s vote was reminiscent of the last election in 2020, in which he obtained 94 percent of the ballots with a turnout slightly above 50 percent in an election then boycotted by the main opposition.

None of the four candidates who faced Ouattara represented a major party or had the reach of the ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace.

Polls open in the West African nation in a heated election set to deliver a fourth term to 83-year-old Alassane Ouattara.

Voters in the Ivory Coast are casting ballots for president with incumbent Alassane Ouattara the overwhelming favourite as he runs for a fourth term.

Nearly nine million Ivorians will vote on Saturday from 8am to 6pm (08:00 to 18:00 GMT), choosing from a field of five contenders.

Opposition heavyweights, however, aren’t running for the post. Former President Laurent Gbagbo and former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam have been barred from standing, the former for a criminal conviction and the latter for acquiring French citizenship.

Critics said the exclusion of key candidates has given Ouattara, 83, an unfair advantage and essentially cleared the way for his fourth term.

None of his four rivals represents an established party nor do they have the reach of the ruling Rally of Houphouetistes for Democracy and Peace (RHDP).

Agribusinessman and former Trade Minister Jean-Louis Billon, 60, hopes to rally backers from his former party, the Democratic Party, while former first lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, 76, is looking to garner votes from supporters of her ex-husband.

The left-wing vote hangs in the balance between Gbagbo and Ahoua Don Mello, a civil engineer and independent Pan-African with Russian sympathies. Henriette Lagou Adjoua, one of the first two women to run for the presidency during the 2015 election, is representing a centrist coalition, the Group of Political Partners for Peace.

At the Riviera Golf 1 Primary School in the Ivory Coast’s economic capital, Abidjan, where Gbagbo is expected to cast her vote, the atmosphere appeared calm as the first voters began to queue in the early hours of Saturday.

“This vote means a lot to us,” Konate Adama told Al Jazeera. “We need a candidate to emerge from these elections. It will lead us towards peace, wisdom and tranquillity.”

Turnout will be key as the opposition continues to call for a boycott. About 8.7 million people aged above 18 are eligible to vote in a country of 33 million with a median age of 18.3.

To win, a candidate must take an absolute majority of the votes. A second round will take place if no one clears that hurdle.

Controversial fourth term

Results are expected early next week, and observers forecast Ouattara to win the more than 50 percent needed to secure victory in the first round.

The octogenarian has wielded power in the world’s top cocoa producer since 2011 when the country began reasserting itself as a West African economic powerhouse.

Under the constitution, presidents may serve a maximum of two terms. Ouattara argues a major constitutional change implemented in 2016 “reset” his limit.

The decision has angered his detractors. Opposition and civil society groups also complain of restrictions on Ouattara’s critics and a climate of fear.

About 44,000 security forces were deployed across the country to keep protests in check, especially in opposition strongholds in the south and west. A night-time curfew was in place on Friday and Saturday in the region where the political capital, Yamoussoukro, is located.

Authorities said they want to avoid “chaos” and a repeat of unrest surrounding the 2020 presidential election. According to official figures, 85 people died then while the opposition said there were more than 200 deaths.

Opposition parties have encouraged Ivorians to protest against Ouattara’s predicted fourth term. On Monday, an Independent Electoral Commission building was torched.

The government has responded by banning demonstrations, and the judiciary has sentenced several dozen people to three years in prison for disturbing the peace.

In 2010, the country was plunged into a conflict that killed at least 3,000 people after the presidential election between Gbagbo and Ouattara.

The Ivorians, who return to the World Cup finals for the first time since 2014, went through the entire 10-game group campaign without conceding a goal, one of two nations on the continent to do so alongside Tunisia.

Ivory Coast and Senegal join Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, Cape Verde and South Africa in booking their ticket to next year’s World Cup finals.

One more side – the winners of next month’s continental play-offs – could join that group if they emerge from an inter-confederation tournament in March next year.

Cameroon, DR Congo, Gabon and Nigeria finished as the four best-ranked second-placed sides across the nine groups and one of those sides will have the chance to become Africa’s 10th representative at the expanded 48-team World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

The Confederation of African Football is yet to announce a date for the play-off draw.

Alassane Ouattara, 83, announced the plan after changing the constitution to remove presidential term limits.

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara has announced he will seek a fourth term leading the West African nation, as tensions rise over the exclusion of many heavyweight opposition candidates.

Earlier, he had been officially nominated by his ruling Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party as its candidate, but had not yet said if he would contest the October 25 election.

With the country’s most high-profile opposition politicians ruled ineligible, Ouattara is the clear frontrunner.

The 83-year-old president, who has led the country since 2011, declared his plan in a televised announcement on Tuesday.

“For several months, I have received numerous calls from fellow citizens regarding my potential candidacy in the presidential election,” he said.

Referring to the country by its name in French, he went on: “Women and young people from all regions of Cote d’Ivoire, and countless anonymous voices from our neighbourhoods, towns, and villages have reached out.

“In response to those appeals, I announced on June 22 that, as president of all Ivorians, I would, after careful reflection, make a decision guided solely by the best interest of the nation.”

Ouattara won a third term in 2020 after the constitution was changed to reset the presidential term limit. He had said he was not going to run again, but he changed his position following the death of his hand-picked successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly.

Opposition campaign

Critics of Ouattara accuse him of tightening his grip on power and strongly oppose his running again.

The opposition has accused the authorities of targeting their opponents by legal means, but the government insists the judiciary acts independently.

The two main opposition parties have launched a joint campaign to demand the reinstatement of their barred leaders ahead of the presidential election.

This alliance brings together the African People’s Party of Ivory Coast (PPA-CI) – led by former president Laurent Gbagbo – and the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), the country’s largest opposition force, headed by former international banker Tidjane Thiam.

Gbagbo, his former right-hand man Charles Ble Goude and ex-Prime Minister Guillaume Soro have been struck from the electoral register due to criminal convictions.

Ouattara’s most prominent rival, Thiam, was barred from running by a court on the grounds that he was still a French citizen at the time he declared his candidacy, even though he later renounced his French nationality. Ivorian law bans dual nationals from running for president.

Some previous elections in the Ivory Coast have been fraught with tension and violence. When Ouattara announced his third-term bid, several people were killed in the ensuing violence. There have been protests against the court’s decision to bar Thiam from contesting the election.

Ouattara is the latest among a growing number of leaders in West Africa who remain in power after changing the constitutional term limit.

Coup leaders in the region have used alleged corruption within democratic governments and electoral changes as a pretext to seize power, leading to a split in the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The Electoral Commission head has said no revision of the electoral register will take place before the poll.

Four prominent opposition figures in the Ivory Coast have been excluded from the final electoral list, according to the Electoral Commission, leaving them ineligible to contest pivotal October presidential elections in a nation with not-too-distant memories of civil war and coup attempts.

“My elimination from the electoral list by the Independent Electoral Commission [CEI] is a sad but eloquent example of Ivory Coast’s drift towards a total absence of democracy,” Tidjane Thiam, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), said in a statement on Wednesday.

Thiam’s statement came two days after CEI head Ibrahime Kuibiert Coulibaly announced that no revision of the electoral register would take place before the vote.

Thiam, who was widely seen as the main challenger to President Alassane Ouattara, was struck from the voter roll in April after a court ruled that he was not eligible to run for president because of his dual Ivorian-French nationality. Thiam, who was born in Ivory Coast, received French nationality in 1987 but renounced it in March.

Other major Ivorian candidates excluded from the vote include former President Laurent Gbagbo and his close ally Charles Ble Goude, who was charged with crimes against humanity related to the civil war.

The former prime minister and rebel leader Guillaume Soro is also barred. He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for organising a coup.

None of the four will be able to run in the October 25 presidential race or vote.

Ouattara, who has been in power since 2011, is included on the electoral register but has yet to announce if he will seek a fourth term.

In 2015 and 2020, Ouattara won with more than 80 percent of the vote.

Thiam has appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee, his party said.

His lawyer Mathias Chichportich said in a statement sent to the AFP news agency that depriving the opposition leader of “his political rights” was “a serious violation of Ivory Coast’s international commitments”.

Gbagbo’s African Peoples’ Party-Ivory Coast (PPA-CI) complained that the authorities “did not choose to listen to the advice, the calls for discussion, for reason”, its Secretary-General Jean-Gervais Tcheide told AFP.

“It’s a shame they chose to force their way through,” he said, adding: “We’re not going to let them do it.”

Other opposition figures who announced their plans to run for the presidency are featured on the final electoral list.

They include former First Lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, who, speaking on behalf of an opposition coalition, said that the conditions were not met for a “peaceful, calm election”.

During the 2020 presidential election, a revision of the electoral list took place in June ahead of the October polling day.

The final electoral register for this year’s ballot includes the names of 8.7 million voters, in a country with a high immigrant population and where nearly half of the 30 million inhabitants are under the age of 18.

Authorities deny any political interference in the electoral process, insisting that they respect decisions made by an independent judiciary.

Fake stories of a coup d’etat in the West African nation of Ivory Coast surfaced this week amid mounting tensions over the upcoming October general elections.

Several accounts on social media sites, including Facebook and X, posted videos of huge crowds on streets with burning buildings, which they claimed were from the country’s commercial capital, Abidjan.

However, no violence was reported by security forces or any other government authorities in the city this week. Abidjan residents also denied the claims on social media.

On Thursday, the country’s National Agency for Information Systems Security of Ivory Coast (ANSSI) denied the rumours.

In a statement published on local media sites, the agency said: “Publications currently circulating on the X network claim that a coup d’etat has taken place in Cote d’Ivoire [Ivory Coast] … This claim is completely unfounded. It is the result of a deliberate and coordinated disinformation campaign.”

The rumours come just weeks after popular opposition politician Tidjane Thiam was barred from running for office after his eligibility was challenged in court over a technicality relating to his citizenship status. Thiam is appealing the ruling and claims the ban is political.

Ivory Coast, Africa’s cocoa powerhouse, has a long history of election violence, with one episode a decade ago spiralling into armed conflict that resulted in thousands of deaths.

Fears that President Alassane Ouattara might run for a fourth term have added to the tensions this time. Although the country has a two-term limit for presidents, a constitutional amendment in 2016 reset the clock on his terms, the president’s supporters argue, allowing him to run for a third five-year term in 2020. That same argument could also see him on the ballot papers this October, despite what experts say is widespread disillusionment with the political establishment in the country.

Here’s what we know about the current political situation in the country:

How did the coup rumours start?

Videos showing hundreds of people demonstrating in the streets and setting fires to shops and malls started appearing on social media sites on Wednesday this week. French is the official language in Ivory Coast, but most of the posts and blogs with images purporting to be from were from Abidjan and claiming that a coup d’etat was in progress were written in English.

Some posts also claimed that the country’s army chief of staff, Lassina Doumbia, had been assassinated and that President Ouattara was missing. These claims were untrue and have been denied by the office of the president. Credible media outlets, including Ivorian state media and private news media, did not report the alleged violence.

It is unclear how the rumours that President Ouattara was missing emerged. On Thursday, he chaired a routine cabinet meeting in the capital. He also attended a ceremony commemorating the revered former president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, alongside Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe.

Why are there political tensions in the country?

The upcoming general elections on October 25 are at the root of current political tensions in the country.

Elections have in the past been violent: During the October 2010 general election, former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to hand over power to Ouattara, who was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission.

Tense political negotiations failed, and the situation eventually spiralled into armed civil war, with Ouattara’s forces, backed by French troops, besieging Gbagbo’s national army. France is the former colonial power in Ivory Coast, and Ouattara has close ties to Paris.

Some 3,000 people were killed in the violence. Gbagbo’s capture on April 11, 2011, marked the end of the conflict. He was later tried and acquitted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in 2019.

That painful history has spurred fears that this year’s polls could also turn violent, as several opposition candidates, including Gbagbo, have been barred from running, mainly due to past convictions. In 2018, the former president was sentenced in absentia to a 20-year jail term over the looting of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) during the country’s post-election crisis.

Last December, the governing Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party nominated Ouattara for a fourth term as president. So far, Ouattara has refused to say whether he intends to run, triggering concerns among Ivorians, many of whom feel the president has outstayed his welcome. Analysts see the party’s nomination as setting the stage for his eventual candidature, however.

Analysts also say there is widespread sympathy for the young military leaders who seized power in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, and who have maintained a hostile stance towards France, unlike Ouattara.

What is the popular view of Ouattara?

He has been praised for overseeing rapid economic stability in the last decade and a half, which has made the country the regional economic hub.

Ouattara is also credited with bringing some level of political peace to the country. In 2023, he welcomed back Gbagbo, who had been living in Brussels since his 2021 ICC acquittal. Since then, election campaigns have not been as inflamed as they were in the 2000s when Gbagbo played on ethnic sentiments to incite opposition to Ouattara, whose father was originally from Burkina Faso.

However, Ouattara’s critics accuse him of fighting to hold onto power unconstitutionally. Some also accuse him of coercing state institutions into railroading his political opponents, including in the latest case involving Thiam.

His closeness with France, which is increasingly viewed as arrogant and neo-colonialistic, particularly by younger people across Francophone West Africa, has not won the president any favour from the country’s significant under-35 population.

Who is Tidjane Thiam, and why has he been barred from the elections?

Thiam, 62, is a prominent politician and businessman in Ivorian political circles. He is a nephew of the revered Houphouet-Boigny and was the first Ivorian to pass the entrance exam to France’s prestigious Polytechnique engineering school. He returned from France to serve as a minister of planning and development from 1998 until 1999, when a coup d’etat collapsed the civilian government, and the army took control of the country.

Thiam declined a cabinet position offered by the military government and left the country. He went on to take high-profile positions, first as the chief executive of the UK insurance group, Prudential, and then as head of global investment bank Credit Suisse. A corporate espionage scandal at the bank led to his resignation in 2020 after a colleague accused Thiam of spying on him. Thiam was cleared of any involvement.

After returning to Ivory Coast in 2022, Thiam re-entered politics and rejoined the Democratic Party (PDCI), the former governing party which held power from independence in 1960 until the 1999 coup d’etat, and which is now the major opposition party.

In December 2023, the party’s delegates overwhelmingly voted for Thiam to be the next leader following the death of former head and ex-President Henri Konan Bedie. At the time, PDCI officials said Thiam represented a breath of fresh air for the country’s politics, and many young people appeared ready to back him as the next president.

But his ambitions came to a halt on April 22 when a judge ordered his name be struck off the list of contenders because Thiam had taken French nationality in 1987 and automatically lost Ivorian citizenship according to the country’s laws.

Although the politician renounced his French nationality in February this year, the court ruled he had not done so before registering himself on the electoral roll in 2022, and was thus ineligible to be the party leader, a presidential candidate, or even a voter.

Thiam and his lawyers argued that the law is inconsistent. Ivorian footballers on the country’s national team, Thiam pointed out in one interview with reporters, are mostly also French nationals, but face no restrictions on holding Ivorian nationality. “The bottom line is, I was born Ivorian,” Thiam told the BBC in an interview, accusing the government of trying to block what he said is his party’s likely success in this year’s elections.

Will Thiam be able to stand and who else is standing?

It is unclear if Thiam can legally make his way back onto the candidate list, but he is trying.

In May, he resigned as PDCI president and was almost immediately re-elected with 99 percent of the vote. He has yet to reveal if he will attempt to re-register as a candidate, but has promised to keep up the fight.

Thiam has pledged to attract industrial investment to the country as he once did as minister, and to remove the country from the France-backed CFA currency economy that comprises West and Central African countries formerly colonised by France, and sees their currencies pegged to the euro.

Meanwhile, other strong candidates include Pascal Affi N’Guessan, 67, a former prime minister and close ally of Gbagbo, who will represent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

Simone Gbagbo, the former first lady who is now divorced from Gbagbo, will also run, as the nominee for the Movement of the Capable Generations. She was sentenced to a 20-year term in 2015 on charges of undermining state security, but benefitted from an amnesty law to foster national reconciliation later in 2018.

Tidjane Thiam’s campaign has been halted as presidential candidates are not allowed to hold dual citizenship.

Ivory Coast’s main opposition leader has said he is resigning as party leader but would still lead the fight to win the election, after having been barred from standing in an October presidential vote.

“In the interest of the party, I’ve decided to place my mandate as president of the party in your hands, the activists,” Thiam said in a speech published on social media on Monday.

“This decision does not change the commitment I made in December 2023 to personally lead our party to victory in October 2025.”

President Alassane Ouattara, 83, who has been in power since 2011, has yet to say whether he plans to run again but has said he is eager to “continue serving my country”.

Tidjane Thiam’s campaign for the presidency of the West African country has been mired in tussles over his nationality, as presidential candidates are not allowed to hold dual citizenship.

Thiam was born in the Ivory Coast and renounced his French passport in March to enable his run for the top job. However, a court in Abidjan struck him off the electoral list last month, saying the 62-year-old politician had lost Ivorian nationality when he acquired French citizenship in 1987.

Thiam also faces a legal case against his election as head of the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast–African Democratic Rally (PDCI) after a party member also contested his Ivorian nationality at the time he was chosen.

PDCI deputy president Ernest N’Koumo Mobio assumed the party’s interim leadership following Thiam’s announcement. He appealed for “cohesion, serenity and discipline” and called a party meeting early Monday due to “the urgency linked to the political situation”.

Three other opposition figures have also been excluded from the presidential race, including former President Laurent Gbagbo due to court convictions.

Thiam alleged irregularities on Monday. “While we had the right to hope for inclusive, transparent and peaceful elections, it is clear that the unjustified removal of the PDCI candidate is part of the logic of eliminating the leaders of the main opposition parties to ensure tailor-made elections and a certain victory,” he said.

The authorities regularly reject claims of any political intervention in the electoral process, saying decisions are taken by an independent judiciary.