Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Who was Félix Houphouët-Boigny?

Félix Houphouët-Boigny, affectionately called Papa Houphouët or Le Vieux, was the first President of Côte d'Ivoire. Originally a tribal chief, he worked as a doctor, an administrator of a plantation, and a union leader, before being elected to the French Parliament and serving in a number of ministerial positions in the French government. From the 1940s until his death, he played a leading role in the decolonization of Africa and in his country's politics.

Under Houphouët-Boigny's politically moderate leadership, Côte d'Ivoire prospered economically. This success, uncommon in poverty-ridden West Africa, became known as the "Ivorian miracle" and was due to a combination of sound planning, the maintenance of strong ties with the West, and development of the country's significant coffee and cocoa industries. However, the exploitation of the agricultural sector caused difficulties in 1980, after a sharp drop in the prices of coffee and cocoa.

Throughout his presidency, Houphouët-Boigny maintained a close relationship with France, a policy known as Françafrique, and he built a close friendship with Jacques Foccart, the chief adviser on African policy in the de Gaulle and Pompidou governments. He aided the conspirators who ousted Kwame Nkrumah from power in 1966, took part in the coup against Mathieu Kérékou in 1977, and was suspected of involvement in the 1987 coup that removed Thomas Sankara from power in Burkina Faso. Houphouët-Boigny maintained an ardently anti-communist foreign policy, which resulted in, among other things, severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1969 and reestablishing them in February 1986, refusing to recognise the People's Republic of China until 1983, and providing assistance to UNITA, a United States-supported, anti-communist rebel movement in Angola.