Some figures shape institutions not through public acclaim but through the persistent, often unseen work of reform. Bakari Traoré fits that mould precisely. A business lawyer and tax specialist, attorney, and consultant in governance, corporate social responsibility, and ethics, this discreet Ivorian has devoted three decades to constructing, piece by piece, the legal architecture that underpins commerce across West Africa.

The story begins in the late 1990s, when this doctor of business and economic law brought a stark reality to his minister’s attention: the laws governing commercial companies were dangerously outdated, rooted in colonial-era texts from 1867 and 1925. That observation ignited a national initiative that soon expanded into a regional project—the reform of OHADA.