Ouattara Gets African Peace Prize Despite Death Of Journalists, Violent Crackdown On Opposition

Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara has received the 2025 African Prize for the Promotion of Peace despite his regime’s crackdown on journalists’ press freedom and major opposition parties.

Recognised on January 21, 2025, Ouattara officially received the award in September 2025, indicating a show of recognition by the awardee, the African Conference for Promoting Peace, which is a joint initiative of the Mauritanian government and the Abu Dhabi Peace Forum.

Ouattara’s 2025 peace recognition, however, was presented amid his regime’s long-standing crackdown on journalists. For example, under Ouattara, who became President of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire in 2011, journalists have been subjected to harassment, assaults, and jailed for exercising their right to the press.

Similarly, as Ouattara changed the constitution in 2016 to remove the presidential term limit, his prominent opposition party leader, Tidjane Thiam, a former CEO of Credit Suisse and party nominee for President of the African Democratic Rally (PDCI), was recently removed by the Constitutional Council from the presidential ballot because the latter possesses a dual Ivorian-French nationality – one to which he had renounced.

Former President Laurent Gbagbo of the African People’s Party of the Ivory Coast, along with his former ally Charles Ble Goude and former prime minister Guillaume Soro, have also been removed from the electoral register because of criminal convictions.

The Constitutional Council has consistently required the status of elector as a condition of eligibility,” the Council President, Chantal Nanaba Camara, stated, declaring the two men’s candidacies ‘inadmissible’.

As the next election on October 25 approaches, Ouattara has, however, expressed his intention to run for the fourth time, with six opposition party members of the African Peoples’ Party of the Côte d’Ivoire, or PPA-CI, reportedly abducted.

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Mayowa Durosinmi

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M. Durosinmi is a West Africa Weekly investigative reporter covering Politics, Human Rights, Health, and Security in West Africa and the Sahel Region

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