The Ivory Coast/Côte d’Ivoire is an African success story. Two decades ago, it faced civil war but emerged stronger than ever after one of the United Nations‘s only successful peacekeeping missions. Between 2021 and 2024, its economy’s growth met or surpassed 6%, far above the global average. As regional countries’ leaders fell to coups, religious strife, Russian influence, or, in Liberia’s case, corruption, the country stood strong.
The capital Abidjan reflects the Ivory Coast’s success. It is safe, its infrastructure is advanced, and its skyline is growing. Tour F, Abidjan’s newest skyscraper set to open next year, will, at 1,381 feet, become Africa’s tallest. Nor is this development merely a case, like Azerbaijan or Iraqi Kurdistan, where a few regime-affiliated families become fabulously wealthy while the rest of society sinks into poverty. The Ivory Coast aims to become an upper-middle-income country by 2030, on par with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and South Africa.
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Sadly, President Donald Trump’s embrace of strongmen and his disdain for democracy promotion may condemn the Ivory Coast to ruin. President Alassane Ouattara, 83, won a disputed election in 2010 that nearly led to renewed civil war after a corrupt election commission changed the victor, and he won a second term in 2015. While the Ivorian constitution allows only two terms, Alassane Ouattara ran again in 2020, winning with 95% due to an opposition boycott. If his candidacy was controversial then, it is even more so now, given his age and declining mental acuity.
Ivorians will head to the polls on October 25. They will not have much of a choice. Ouattara has used dubious and hypocritical grounds to disqualify competitors, including squeaky-clean technocrats like Tidjane Thiam, the former chief executive officer of Credit Suisse and chief financial officer of Prudential. He has done the same for anyone else who polls more than 3 or 4% nationwide. While Ouattara questions Thiam’s citizenship and accuses him of actually being French, such arguments are blatantly hypocritical given Ouattara’s indignation when his predecessor tried to disqualify him on his alleged Burkina Faso origins. His wife, too, like Thiam’s, is French. Indeed, Ouattara’s true motivation appears to be fear that Thiam could uncover corruption and disrupt a patronage network that has begun to put brakes on the Ivory Coast’s forward trajectory.
There is frustration even within Ouattara’s own party about his refusal to step aside; many in the Ivorian business community are increasingly nervous that his effort to continue in power could lead to violence and the end of Ivorian exceptionalism in a region where only Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and Ghana are successful.
During the Biden administration, there was bipartisan consensus that the United States should urge Ouattara to stand down on both legal grounds and for the Ivory Coast’s stability. Under Trump, policy appears to be official detachment; no matter how blatant Ouattara’s abuse, Washington will take no position. If the past is precedent, Ouattara’s efforts to undermine Ivorian democracy elections will lead to violence, if not civil war, the only beneficiaries of which will be Russia or perhaps China.
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Groups like the National Democratic Institute, meanwhile, which has worked in the country for more than 30 years and might once have led an election observation, appear to have largely stood down amidst budget cuts and the unfortunate tendency of its leadership to apply its remaining budget to their own travel to unnecessary conferences rather than more substantive democracy work.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio may not care much about Africa, but as with President Barack Obama, who sought to move on from the Middle East only to face the Islamic State, Trump and Rubio may find that neglect does not bring peace but causes crisis. Trump and Rubio have a choice: Re-engage in the Ivory Coast to ensure real democracy prevails or risk another domino falling that will catalyze chaos throughout the region and empower American adversaries.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.