Tidjane Thiam a former Credit Suisse chief executive officer is eyeing the Ivory Coast Presidency in 2025 but is facing a critical test already.
The former banker is taking his shot at the presidency under the flag of the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast, which ruled the West African nation for decades after independence in 1960 but has been out of power since 1999.
At 61, Tidjane is relatively young in the Ivorian presidential landscape, which is dominated by older politicians.
Tidjane is among the candidates vying to lead the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast after the death of Henri Konan Bedie, who headed the West African nation’s opposition party for three decades.
Thiam’s mother was the niece of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the country’s independence leader and first president.
Thiam is the most serious challenger because of the family ties with the Boigny family according said Francis Alain Konan, who runs a family rubber business in Ivory Coast and who supports Thiam.
However, political opponents have portrayed Thiam as having parachuted in from Paris with a sense of entitlement.
As a dual French-Ivorian national, they have also pointed out he would need to give up his French citizenship to run, something he has said he is prepared to do.
In his speeches, Thiam has emphasised his private sector credentials, saying that helping small and medium-sized enterprises to flourish was the key to economic growth.
Though Ivory Coast’s economy has recovered quickly from civil wars in 2002 and 2011, about two-thirds of the population is engaged in agriculture, including cocoa production.
Tidjane Thiam is an Ivorian and French businessman, and the executive chairman of Freedom Acquisition Corp. He was the chief executive officer of Swiss bank Credit Suisse from March 2015 to February 2020.
