Bakari Traoré: the discreet architect of African business law

Some figures wield influence not through titles but through the lasting marks they leave on institutions. Bakari Traoré is one such figure. A business lawyer and tax specialist, attorney, and consultant in governance, CSR, and ethics, this discreet Ivorian has spent three decades helping to build, piece by piece, the foundations of West Africa’s business framework.

It all began in the late 1990s, when this doctor of business and economic law drew his minister’s attention to the glaring obsolescence of the texts governing commercial companies—laws dating back to 1867 and 1925, inherited from the colonial era. From that observation emerged a national project that grew into a regional one: the reform of OHADA.