How Much Do You Know Henri Konan Bedie Who Died At 89?

Afimag.com –

Former Ivorian President and head of the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast Henri Konan Bedie died on August 1, 2023, at 89. The career diplomat and politician led Ivory Coast from 1993 to 1999 until he was removed in a military coup

Henri Konan Bedie was part of an old guard of politicians that controlled the politics in the West African nation for a generation.

He was handpicked by his predecessor, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Bedie to serve as Ivory Coast’s second president after independence from France in 1960. He ruled from 1993 until an economic slump and allegations of corruption triggered his ouster in a military coup six years later.

Bedie died on Tuesday at the Polyclinique Internationale Sainte Anne-Marie, a hospital, Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital and largest city.

He was long remembered – and in some parts reviled – for his role in promoting the issue of “Ivoirite”, or Ivorian identity, which fuelled tensions between those who considered themselves natives in the south and east and the many foreign workers from neighbouring countries long settled in the northern Ivory Coast.

A Career Diplomat And Politician

Henri Konan Bedie Bedie was born on May 5, 1934, at Dadiekro, 300km (190 miles) east of Abidjan to a poor farmer. He was among the best 100 students picked in the early 1950s to study in France, where he earned a doctorate in economics at Poitiers University.

In 1959, he joined the French diplomatic service and was posted as a counsellor to the French embassy in Washington. When Ivory Coast won independence in 1960, Bedie became its ambassador there.