Icon: enlarge
Ivorian Prime Minister Bakayoko (archive image from 2015)
Photo: THOMAS SAMSON / AFP
The Prime Minister of the West African Ivory Coast, Hamad Bakayoko, is dead. Bakayoko died late Wednesday evening in a Freiburg clinic of complications from cancer, according to a statement on Ivory Coast national television.
The 56-year-old was considered a possible successor to President Alassane Ouattara.
Bakayoko referred to in the declaration as "my son and close colleague who was torn from our midst too early."
The country was "in mourning," Ouattara announced on Twitter.
He had previously appointed Patrick Achi as temporary head of government.
Bakayoko had only been appointed as the successor to Prime Minister Amadou Coulibaly, who died of heart disease, last July.
In March 2020, President Ouattara had actually announced that he was not running for a third term, but was re-elected and re-elected after the death of his designated successor Coulibaly.
The election was overshadowed by violence and tension, and the opposition criticized Ouattara's renewed candidacy as unconstitutional.
According to the Reuters news agency, Bakayoko was flown to France for medical examinations in mid-February, and was later transferred to Freiburg.
Icon: The mirror
fek / dpa / AFP / Reuters
