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Editors’ Forum Hot Spots

A History of Crisis in Côte d’Ivoire

FROM THE SERIES: Côte d'Ivoire Is Cooling Down? Reflections a Year after the Battle for
Abidjan

By Joseph Hellweg
June 25, 2012
Publication Information

Cite As: Hellweg, Joseph. 2012. "A History of Crisis in Côte d’Ivoire." Hot Spots,
Fieldsights, June 25. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-history-of-crisis-in-c%C3%B4te-
divoire

Decades ago, Côte d’Ivoire was known as a “beacon of stability” in West Africa and
an “economic powerhouse” [1]. Its first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, was
praised for these accomplishments [2, 3]. Years later, his legacy is less certain. His
key decisions and the reactions to them by his contemporaries who led the country
after his death prefigured Côte d’Ivoire’s current problems.

After independence, Houphouët turned Côte d’Ivoire into an agricultural dynamo

through cocoa and coffee production. Early observers recognized the risk of tying
Côte d’Ivoire’s economy so closely to fluctuations in world market prices for
agricultural products [4, 5, 6, 7]. And when the value of cocoa and coffee fell in the
late 1970s and 80s [8; 9, p. 39], so did the national economy [10]. Then in 1994, the
value of the country’s currency, the franc CFA—the currency of France’s former
West African colonies—was devalued. The country never recovered.

Following on the heels of the economic crisis was a political one. In 1991, the
structural adjustment policies of Houphouët-Boigny’s prime minister, Alassane
Ouattara, triggered violent demonstrations led by Laurent Gbagbo, a historian at
the time and the country’s leading opposition politician. Ouattara had him arrested
in 1992 [11, pp. 38-39] for his role in the demonstrations.

Further problems emerged in 1993 stemming from procedures intended to assure

a constitutional succession after Houphouët-Boigny’s death. The constitution
named as Houphouët’s successor the president of the National Assembly, Henri
Konan Bédié, but only after the Supreme Court was to observe a “vacancy in
power.” At the time, the high court had several vacancies of its own left unfilled.
Prime Minister Ouattara exploited the resulting delay in succession to retain
executive powers that he had assumed during Houphouët’s long illness. The
stalemate ended when Bédié declared himself president in what amounted to a
constitutional coup d’état. Ouattara resigned, and Bédié initiated the infamous
policy of ivoirité: Côte d'Ivoire was for Ivoirians alone, and the citizenship of Jula-
speaking Muslims and other northern-descended persons like Ouattara was
suspect [11, pp. 39-45]. In a country where Jula and Senufo-speaking migrants from
northern Côte d’Ivoire and immigrants from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea
contributed the vast share of Côte d’Ivoire’s agricultural and infrastructural labor
[12], ivoirité proved a catastrophic strategy for marginalizing Bédié’s primary
political rival.

In 1999, disgruntled soldiers overthrew Bédié, installing General Robert Guéï as

president. Guéï had been military chief of staff for both Houphouët and Bédié, but
his regime was short-lived. He suspended presidential elections in 2000 when
Laurent Gbagbo, the only opposition candidate allowed to run, began to win. Guéï
declared himself president, but Gbagbo’s supporters took to the streets, overthrew
Guéï, and made Gbagbo president. At the same time, Gbagbo’s partisans also
committed what would be the first in a series of politically motivated, ethnically
tinged massacres over the next dozen years: the murder of over fifty Muslim, Jula
men behind a prison in Abidjan [13, 14]. The event recalled the much larger
massacre in 1970 of between 4,000 and 6,000 Bété-speakers in the village of
Guébié after local resident Kragbé Gnagbé insisted on forming his own political
party [15]. It was Houphouët, not Gbagbo, who perpetrated Côte d’Ivoire’s first
political bloodbath.

Gbagbo’s reign proved as precarious as Guéï’s, albeit longer and more violent.
Gbagbo intensified the policy of ivoirité [15, 16, 17], provoked a rebellion that split
the country in two from 2002 to 2007 [18] (Figure 1), and presided over a paroxysm
of politically motivated rapes and killings following Ouattara’s victory in presidential
elections in 2010; Ouattara’s forces also committed atrocities [19]. Eventually,
Ouattara’s supporters captured and arrested Laurent and Simone Gbabgo on April
11, 2011 with French help. Gbagbo now awaits a hearing at the International
Criminal Court to determine whether or not he should be tried for crimes against
humanity [20].

Fifty-two years after independence, Côte d’Ivoire has come full circle. Its archetypal
opposition figure and past president, Laurent Gbagbo, is now its most notorious
criminal suspect. Its once jilted prime minister, Alassane Ouattara, is a conquering
president called to account for blood on his soldiers’ hands. Twenty years after
Gbagbo’s first imprisonment under Ouattara, Côte d’Ivoire finds the two rivals once
more in analogous positions. The country has inexorably changed, but its future
remains as uncertain as it was under Houphouët-Boigny. What does that future
hold? The authors of this collection ask and try to answer this question by
examining both past and present in ways they hope will lead to useful answers.

References
[1] IRIN. 2011. Film: Cote d’Ivoire: In Search of Stability. IRIN/Africa, July 20
(accessed June 15, 2012).

[2] Toungara, Jeanne Maddox. 1990. The Apotheosis of Côte d’Ivoire’s Nana
Houphouët-Boigny. Journal of Modern African Studies 28 (1): 23-54.

[3] Vogel, Jerome. 1991. Culture, Politics, and National Identity in Côte d’Ivoire.
Social Research 58 (2): 439-456.

[4] Amin, Samir. 1967. Le développement du capitalisme en Côte d’Ivoire. Paris:

Editions de Minuit.

[5] ------. 1973 [1971]. Neo-colonialism in West Africa. Middlesex: Penguin.

[6] Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1964. The Road to Independence: Ghana and the Ivory
Coast. Paris and The Hague: Mouton.

[7] Zartman, I. William and Christopher Delgado. 1984. The Political Economy of the
Ivory Coast. Westport, CT: Praeger.

[8] Economist Intelligence Unit. 1989. Cocoa to 1993: A Commodity in Crisis.

London: The Economist.

[9] Antoine, Philippe, A. Dubresson, and A. Manou-Savina. 1987. Abidjan “côté

cours": Pour comprendre la question de l’habitat. Paris: Karthala.

[10] World Bank. 1996. Poverty in Côte d’Ivoire: A Framework for Action. Abidjan:
World Bank.

[11] Hellweg, Joseph. 2011. Hunting the Ethical State: The Benkadi Movement of
Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[12] Launay, Robert. 1992. Beyond the Stream: Islam and Society in a West African
Town. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[13] Okereke, Godpower O., Peter Racheotes, and Karen Linstrum. 2012. Crime and
Punishment in Côte d’Ivoire. International Journal of Comparative and Applied
Criminal Justice 36 (1): 61-73.

[14] Amnesty International. 2003. Côte d’Ivoire: A Succession of Unpunished

Crimes. Amnesty International, February 27 (accessed June 15, 2012).

[15] Langer, Arnim. 2005. Horizontal Inequalities and Violent Group Mobilization in
Côte d’Ivoire. Oxford Development Studies 33 (1): 25-45.

[16] Dozon, Jean-Pierre. 2000. La Côte d’Ivoire entre démocratie, nationalisme et

ethnonationalisme. Politique africaine 78: 45-62.

[17] Le Pape, Marc. 2002. Chronologie politique de la Côte d’Ivoire, du coup d’état
aux elections. In Côte d’Ivoire: l’année terrible, 1999-2000, edited by M. Le Pape
and C. Vidal. Paris: Karthala.

[18] McGovern, Mike. 2011. Making War in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

[19] Straus, Scott. 2011. 'It’s Sheer Horror Here': Patterns of Violence during the First
Four Months of Côte d’Ivoire’s Post-Electoral Crisis. African Affairs 110 (440): 481-
489.

[20] Karimi, Faith. 2012. War Crimes Court Postpones Gbagbo Hearing to August.
CNN, June 16 (accessed June 20, 2012).
[21] Collier, Paul. 2011. Ivory Coast: Could the Army Force Laurent Gbagbo from
Power?The Guardian/Poverty Matters Blog, January 11 (accessed July 8, 2012).

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