Hello, I'm Katherine Bahunga, presenter and correspondent for the BBC News Channel, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC, people shaping our world from all over the world.
I will come back to Russia. I will participate in the elections. There's an increase in violence according to the cocoa crop. There's no place in the world where women are equal. I will give away the vast majority of my money. It's my full-time focus for the rest of my life. For this interview, I speak to Tidjane Thiam, leader of Ivory Coast's main opposition party. You're going to hear about his bid for the country's presidency that has been blocked by an Ivorian court. Mr. Thiam, a former chief executive of Credit Suisse, says the decision to bar him from the presidential ballot is politically motivated, a claim firmly denied by the Ivorian government. In this conversation, he defends himself against critics who say he is not well known in the country and also sets out his ideas to grow the Ivorian economy through investment and technology. Since the turn of the century, Ivory Coast has suffered two civil wars, but has a high level of income compared to its West African neighbors. But Tidjane Thiam says historical violence in the country has held back its development. And he also believes the current row over his candidacy is deeply damaging to its reputation and prospects. An investor told me this sentence which really stayed with me. He said, "Look, if you cannot tell me that I can come to this country and sue a president's son or daughter and have a chance of winning, I won't come." So the rule of law when I'm fighting here to say that it's not for the regime to choose who runs opposition parties, it's not for the regime to eliminate opposition leaders. That is not stability. That is exactly that will scare investors away. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Tidjane Thiam.
I love my country. I have represented it proudly throughout my life and my career, and I'm a proud African. I think Africa is a wonderful continent. I left my country in difficult circumstances in 93, 94, and when the coup happened in December 99, I was devastated and I left very sad because I believed that my country was going to suffer from the eruption of violence on the political scene. I was very worried in 99 that this is exactly what violence, political violence, would lead to. We had seen it in enough African countries to know that violence is not the way.
And just explain your journey for us because a lot of people around the world have followed your career leading several big businesses. There are very few people like you, a black man, an African, to ascend to those heights in the corporate world. What do you think made it possible for you to be able to do that?
Maybe a simple answer: it's mostly my parents, my upbringing. My father, the first time he came to France was in 1954, and from the airport he asked to be driven to École Polytechnique, which is one of the top French schools, and he walked up to the school. I wasn't even born, and he told the cadets who were keeping it that I will have a child in this school someday. So that drive, the refusal to admit that we are anything less than anybody else. It's not a coincidence. My family, we are five brothers that produced four ministers under four different presidents.
The last time a lot of people would have heard from you would have been when you were CEO of Credit Suisse. You resigned from the bank back in 2020. What have you been up to since then?
President Ramaphosa from South Africa called me, and this was just when COVID was starting, and asked me if I would accept to be an African Union special envoy on COVID. We also worked a lot on the debt issues. So that was one thing I did. We acquired a solar company in California, and I'm working on bringing that capability to Africa because I think solar is a big part of the answer to a lot of the poverty challenges in Africa. You know, it's the ideal solution for a lot of remote areas in Africa where we cannot draw an electric line. Those solar panels, the cost of a solar panel has gone down by 300 times in the last 30 years. So it's become very competitive. It's clean energy and it's a solution to many, many problems.
You return to Ivory Coast. You're not in Ivory Coast today, but you return to politics in the country. You were elected leader of your party, an opposition party, and declared your intention to stand for president. A court in the commercial capital Abidjan has now ruled that you are to be struck off from the electoral register, which means that you can't stand as president. You can't appeal this decision. This puts you in an impossible position now.
Well, I think it can be described as a weakness in every code democracy and legal system. The way the system works is among the electoral rule. Anybody can challenge that, and that decision to strike me off has been made and legally is final. But now we filed the recourse. We think the decision is flawed. The recourse law is very clear: nationality matters can only be addressed by the general prosecutor. So that judge simply did not have the power to make the determination she has made.
So you're challenging the process, but questions around your nationality remain. You've renounced your French citizenship. Where does this leave you in terms of which nationality you hold today?
It was very unclear and I was potentially stateless, which is why I've been stuck in Paris. But the Department of Justice announced that I'm Ivorian. They're saying that in 1987 when I was given French citizenship, I lost my Ivorian citizenship. So until 2025, so for 38 years, I was not Ivorian. And on March 19th when I renounced my French citizenship, I became Ivorian again. This is a process that is not quite well understood, so we're trying to get a clarification on all that. But the bottom line is I was born an Ivorian. So what's happened is that they dug out a 1961 law that has never been applied to anybody but in theory says that if you take another nationality you lose your Ivorian citizenship. So I would be the first and only person to whom that would be applied. Most of the Ivorian football team is in the same case. So if we apply the law the way they just applied it to me, we have to give the cup back to Nigeria because half the team was not Ivorian. So it's a political incident. I think it's not good for our image. It's not good for the country. And I wish we could move beyond that stage and talk about what really matters for Ivorians, which is the question I always ask. This government has been in power for 15 years. Do they deserve five more? For me, that's what should be the focus of the presidential campaign, not my passport.
And it's important to give the view of the ruling party which says of course that the judiciary is independent and this is an independent process that is not influenced by politics. That is their rebuttal to any questions that this is being used as a weapon against you.
So let's look at you as a candidate wishing to take on the presidency. There are questions as to how popular you are in Ivory Coast. When I speak to colleagues on the ground in Ivory Coast, looking at political analysis, a lot of people say that you're just not well known in Ivory Coast, especially to the average person. You've been away for too long.
Well, I'm extremely well known in Ivory Coast because I've always been a reference for Ivorians. I know that may not sound humble. We conduct very regular polling and the latest polls show that less than 1% of Ivorians answer that they don't know me when we test my notoriety, and I tested above all the other politicians in terms of favorability and awareness. So I think this is a red herring. It's an easy thing to say but fortunately for me it's not supported by the facts. And in the latest poll that we have, I was leading in the second round of the election 57% versus 43% for the incumbent. So it's just not true. And the party is the oldest party in Ivory Coast that I chair. I was just recently elected, nominated the candidate. We had a 93% participation rate for that convention. It was held on a weekday and I got a 99.5% vote from the 5,300 voters in the party who are authorized to vote. So this thing is repeated, but it's certainly not true.
