Play as · WW3 2026 · L1 · West African Anchor · Cocoa

Ivory Coast - 2026

Côte d'Ivoire is governed by Alassane Ouattara - re-elected to a constitutionally-contested third term in 2020, with the 2025 election cycle reopening the question of whether a fourth term will be pursued - and the country whose strategic-economic identity rests on being the world's largest cocoa producer (about 40% of global supply alongside neighbor Ghana), the West African anchor for francophone-aligned regional politics, and the ECOWAS-leadership state that has been the principal opponent of the AES (Alliance of Sahel States) confederation that Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have established post-coup. Population about 30M, GDP around $200B PPP. The strategic identity is the West African economic-and-political anchor with the cocoa-export economy, the post-French-military-base presence (the 43rd BIMa in Port-Bouët was substantially withdrawn in 2024 under the broader French-African reset), and the regional-leadership role that the AES contestation has progressively complicated.

Starting position

The Ivorian Armed Forces are about 25,000 active personnel, oriented toward border defense (the Burkinabé and Malian frontiers in the post-2020 jihadist-and-AES environment, the Liberian and Guinean frontiers), internal security, and regional-cooperation deployments. Equipment is mixed and modest. The post-French-base-closure security reset has been substantial - the 43rd BIMa departure was politically negotiated rather than abruptly imposed, the residual French training-and-cooperation continues at reduced scale, and the bilateral arrangements with the United States, Italy, and the broader ECOWAS partners have been progressively deepened. The cocoa sector has been under EU-deforestation-regulation pressure that has required substantial supply-chain adjustments, the gold and other mining production has expanded, and the offshore oil-and-gas discoveries (the Baleine field) are progressing toward operational delivery.

What turns the campaign

What Côte d'Ivoire under Ouattara wants is the 2025 election cycle managed without producing the kind of post-election violence that the 2010-11 cycle produced (the most consequential civil-war-related crisis of the post-Houphouët-Boigny era), the cocoa-export sector preserved against EU regulatory pressure and the periodic price volatility, the offshore Baleine and other oil-and-gas discoveries operationalized at the projected scale, the ECOWAS regional-leadership role rebuilt after the AES institutional damage, and the post-French-base security architecture sustained against the regional-jihadist-and-AES pressures. What Côte d'Ivoire fears is a Burkinabé or Malian military move that produces direct cross-border crisis, a renewed domestic political crisis on the 2010-11 model, a cocoa-price collapse that disrupts the foreign-currency architecture, and a Houphouët-Boigny-era political-institutional pattern (succession crisis through generational leadership change) that the post-2020 environment has begun to require institutional preparation for.

Signature challenge