Leadership Quote by Alassane Ouattara

The line reads like nation-building boilerplate, but its real work is political triage. As president of a country where the word “together” has been repeatedly stress-tested by coups, disputed elections, and a north-south cleavage that hardened into armed conflict, Ouattara is selling legitimacy by selling unity. “We” isn’t just rhetorical warmth; it’s a demand for shared authorship of the state after years when power looked like a zero-sum prize.

The sequencing matters. “Prosperous” comes first, signaling a governing pitch anchored in performance: growth, jobs, infrastructure, and the promise that stability pays. That’s classic Ouattara, the technocrat-financier turned politician, translating macroeconomic confidence into a moral argument. If the economy moves, the wounds can be managed. Then “united” arrives as both aspiration and correction. It implicitly acknowledges the recent past without naming it, inviting rivals and wary citizens to accept a common national story rather than competing identities.

“Peaceful” lands last, like the ultimate KPI. It’s not sentimental peace; it’s security, demobilization, and the restraint of revenge. The subtext is also disciplinary: unity and peace are framed as collective obligations, which can subtly narrow the space for opposition or dissent if they’re cast as threats to harmony.

In context, this is the language of consolidation: reassuring investors and international partners while telling Ivorians that the era of political exceptionalism is over. It’s a slogan with a handshake inside it, offered with one hand and, quietly, a ledger in the other.