found: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition, accessed April 6, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database: (Bédié, Henri-Konan; president; born 05 May 1934 in Dadekro, Côte d'Ivoire; member of the Baule ethnic group, which has dominated the nation's politics and cocoa interests since independence; attended schools in Côte d'Ivoire and France before completing a doctoral degree in economics from the University of Poitiers in France; entered the Côte d'Ivoire civil service in 1960 during the Côte d'Ivoire's final months as a French colony, serving as diplomatic counselor at the French Embassy in the United States; from 1961 to 1966 was Côte d'Ivoire's first ambassador to the United States; in January 1966 accepted appointment as minister delegate for financial affairs and minister of economy and finance while at the same time acting as a governor of the International Monetary Fund and administrator for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank); in June 1977 became special adviser for African affairs to the president of the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank in Washington, D.C.; returned home in December 1980; was a member of the Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire; was elected president of the new National Assembly; having been reelected assembly president in 1986, he became acting president of Côte d'Ivoire in 1993; in October 1995 won election to a five-year term as president; in December 1999 he was overthrown in Côte d'Ivoire's first successful military coup since independence; fled to Togo and then to Paris, where he attempted to rebuild his political career from afar; returned to Côte d'Ivoire in 2001 and vowed to run for president in the elections presumptively scheduled for sometime in early 2009)
Konan Bédié, Henri
