There are growing signs of violence ahead of the next Ivorian presidential election scheduled for October 31^st, 2020. The country has seen widespread protests in the run-up to the poll, some of which have turned violent. There have been at least a dozen people killed and over 100 people injured in clashes between rival factions and police. With opposition candidates calling for more protests and civil disobedience, there are fears of further unrest in the cocoa-producing nation as the election draws closer.

The protests were sparked by incumbent President Alassane Ouattara of the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) decision to run for a third term, in contravention of the two-term limit in the constitution. Ouattara previously pledged not to run again; however, after his chosen successor Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly died unexpectedly in May of a heart condition, he reneged on that promise.

There are a variety of other candidates running to replace the 78-year-old incumbent. The main contenders being former President Henri Konan Bédié of the PDCI-RDA, former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan of the FPI, and Kouadio Konan Bertin, formerly of the PDCI but now running as an independent. The 86-year-old Bédié is widely considered the candidate the opposition is most likely to rally around should the election go to a runoff.

Former President Laurent Gbagbo, who is currently living in Belgium while he awaits a decision from the ICC on his crimes against humanity charges, is barred from running. Former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, who is currently living in France and has been convicted in absentia of embezzlement and money laundering, was also barred from running. The decision to prevent both men from running sparked further clashes between their supporters and the police.

The Ivory Coast has had experience with electoral violence before. In 2010, when Gbagbo was president, he was proclaimed the winner in a disputed election. Ouattara, then an opposition candidate, and many international leaders and organizations worldwide proclaimed Outtara as the rightful winner. The resulting violence killed over 3,000 people and displaced well over a million.

The presidential election is coming at a time when the Ivory Coast is facing multiple crises. First, the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the economy and has caused the number of households considered extremely poor to multiply four-fold, according to a new report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The UNDP report also revealed that more than two-thirds of households reported lower-income and one-third of all informal jobs have been lost because of the pandemic and lockdown measures implemented to contain it.

The country is also facing a heightened risk of terrorism by Islamist militants in the north. Terrorist groups operating in the Sahel have been expanding their operations into the Ivory Coast in recent years, raising the risk of violence. An assault against a military post in Kafolo in June of this year left ten dead, and analysts at GardaWorld (a security consultancy) say further attacks on military establishments in the north are likely.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, the former colonial power in the region, has been trying to defuse tensions by encouraging the government to postpone the election. According to the Financial Times, Ouattara rebuffed those efforts, perceiving the diplomatic outreach as old-style colonial meddling. Paris’s preferred solution is to have both Ouattara and Bédié drop out of the race and instead allow for a new generation of leaders in a country where 40% of the population is under 15 years old. However, so far neither candidate has shown any willingness to defuse tensions.