Côte d'Ivoire

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.

Enforcement in Cote d'Ivoire rests on the licensing-offence structure of Law No. 2020-480, under which operation outside the LONACI concession or an ARJH authorisation is itself unlawful, backed since April 2026 by a dedicated Council of Ministers-created surveillance unit. That decree gives sworn agents power to conduct unannounced audits and seize non-compliant equipment, acting jointly with the Economic and Financial Criminal Unit and the Criminal Asset Recovery Agency; the reporting behind it is T2-sourced press coverage of a Conseil des Ministres decree, not an independently retrieved primary decree text, so treat its precise scope as probable. This follows a demonstrated pattern: ARJH destroyed more than 110 unlicensed slot machines and their components in the Abidjan/Bingerville area in October 2025, evidencing physical seizure and destruction rather than administrative fines alone as the state's preferred remedy against grey-market equipment. The licence-revocation risk drivers for a licensed operator are the underlying statute's exclusivity terms and any equipment or activity found outside the concession or authorisation boundary; for an unlicensed operator, the risk is direct seizure and destruction under the demonstrated enforcement pattern, now reinforced by dedicated investigative capacity.