Côte d'Ivoire Online Gambling Regulation, Licensing & Tax Regime

Cote d'Ivoire operates a dual-regime gambling regulatory structure under Law No. 2020-480 of 27 May 2020. LONACI holds an exclusive state concession over sports betting, online gambling and lotteries, meaning private operators cannot enter these verticals directly. ARJH separately authorises land-based casinos and slot-machine venues, the only segment genuinely open to private licensees. This cycle shows active enforcement tightening, with ARJH publicly seizing and destroying illegal slot machines, alongside a new 2026 Finance Law measure taxing foreign digital gambling platforms at an effective rate of approximately three percent of turnover. The structural licensing regime itself remains unchanged, but the enforcement and fiscal posture around it has moved materially, consistent with a state strategy to reinforce the LONACI monopoly and capture fiscal value from the offshore-serving grey market.

Three licence classes are now confirmed under Côte d'Ivoire's gambling framework, all deriving from the 6 and 7 December 2023 Council of Ministers decrees implementing Law 2020-480. The LONACI concession covers jeux concédés — lotteries, sports betting, horse-race betting, and virtual betting — and is held exclusively by LONACI, which is 85% state-owned. The ARJH authorisation regime covers promotional and charitable lotteries, and a separate ARJH licensing track covers casino gaming and slot machines. These decrees carry the durability of an implementing instrument under primary legislation, giving the licensing structure a reasonably durable statutory basis. Within this structure, authorisation-issuance, renewal, and withdrawal power for the ARJH track was transferred from joint ministerial control to ARJH's sole competence by the December 2023 decree, a change LONACI's leadership has publicly framed as strengthening the regime's capacity to act against illegal operators. This consolidation is itself set by decree rather than by the enabling Act, giving it a comparatively fragile durability relative to the underlying statutory framework.

A dedicated enforcement capacity has become operational against unlicensed gambling activity. The Unité de Surveillance du Secteur des Jeux de Hasard (USSJH), created by décret n° 2026-236 du 29 avril 2026, held its first operational briefing with the leadership of the Autorité de Régulation des Jeux de Hasard (ARJH) on 12 October 2026, a development reported on 29 October 2026. The unit's remit, per its founding decree, is to inspect gambling sites and record offences committed by operators outside the regulated perimeter. ARJH has framed this capacity against a market it values at more than FCFA 922.3 billion in 2025, positioning the enforcement push as proportionate to a large and, in its own characterisation, under-supervised segment. No enforcement event beyond the unit's operational launch -- no site closure, sanction, or prosecution -- is recorded in evidence reaching; the unit's founding instrument and its first briefing are each independently reported, though the regulator's own publication was not directly reachable this pass, so the account rests on government-communiqué and press reporting. The near-term signal to watch is whether USSJH's inspections translate into visible enforcement actions against identified unlicensed operators.