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Ivory Coast is on the southern coast of West Africa and has just over 25 million inhabitants. The capital is called Yamoussoukro on paper, but the largest city, Abidjan, is the true center of the country.
Côte d’Ivoire became independent from the French colonial regime in 1960. The country’s first president, the father of the country, Félix Houphouët-Boigny – “Papa Houphouët” – continued to have strong ties with France and led a Côte d’Ivoire with a party system unique until his death in 1993.
After that, strong ethnic and social divisions surfaced. The military seized power in a coup in 1999, a first civil war broke out a couple of years later, and since then there have been several violent power shifts. The country is struggling with huge class differences, poverty, unemployment, AIDS, and a shattered healthcare system.
Alassane Ouattara, 78, has been president since 2010. He was prime minister under Félix Houphouët-Boigny and has also been deputy director of the International Monetary Fund. In the last election, which was boycotted by parts of the opposition, he was said to have received 84 percent of the vote.
Opponent Henri Konan Bédié, 86, assumed the presidency after the death of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in fierce competition with Alassane Ouattara. He was deposed in the 1999 military coup.
The shadow of another former president falls on the elections. Laurent Gbagbo, 75, was president until the 2010 elections, when he refused to admit defeat to Alassane Outtara, who had the support of most of the outside world. A violent conflict ensued in which more than 3,000 people died and up to a million were forced to flee.
Gbagbo was released and detained in 2011, after which he was extradited to appear before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands. There he was released earlier this year and is now in Belgium, prohibited from returning or standing for election in Côte d’Ivoire.
