Côte d'Ivoire

The territory joins four worlds. In the north, Mande and Voltaic peoples lived on the edge of the great Sahel empires; the town of Kong became a Muslim trading and scholarly centre from the 18th century, linked to routes towards Djenné and Timbuktu. Its Sudanese-style mud mosques, with wooden beams jutting from the walls, are now on UNESCO's list.

In the east and centre lived Akan peoples related to those of Ghana. The Baoulé trace their origin to Queen Abla Pokou, who according to legend led her people west from the Asante lands in the 18th century and sacrificed her son to cross the Comoé river; 'ba-ou-li', 'the child is dead', gave the people their name.

The forests of the west and south-west were home to Kru peoples such as the Bété, Guéré and Dan, organised in villages rather than kingdoms, with powerful masking traditions. On the lagoon coast, groups like the Ébrié and N'zima fished and traded with European ships.

The Sénoufo of the north built a farming society around the Poro initiation society and sacred forests, and are famous for carved masks, figures and painted cloth still made in villages around Korhogo.

French traders settled at Grand-Bassam and Assinie in the 1840s, and in 1893 France declared the colony of Côte d'Ivoire with Grand-Bassam as capital. Yellow fever epidemics drove the administration to Bingerville in 1900, and Abidjan became capital in 1934 as the railway north and, later, the Vridi canal made it a deep-water port.

Conquest of the interior took decades. The Malinké leader Samory Touré fought the French across the north until his capture in 1898, and Baoulé and forest peoples resisted until about 1915.

The colony was built on forced labour for plantations and public works, and on cash crops: coffee and cocoa in the forest, grown by African planters and by migrants from Upper Volta (Burkina Faso). Those migrants and their descendants became a large part of the population, a fact that shaped later politics.

Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a Baoulé doctor and planter, founded an African farmers' union in 1944 and won the abolition of forced labour in French colonies in 1946. His party, the PDCI, became the dominant force in the colony and in French West African politics.

Côte d'Ivoire became independent on 7 August 1960 with Houphouët-Boigny as president, and he ruled until his death in 1993. He kept close ties to France, including a French military base near Abidjan, welcomed foreign investment and migrants, and made the country the world's largest cocoa producer.

Growth in the 1960s and 70s was so fast that people spoke of the 'Ivorian miracle'. Abidjan's Plateau filled with towers, the Hôtel Ivoire rose in Cocody, and the city was called the Paris of West Africa.

Houphouët moved the capital to his home village, Yamoussoukro, in 1983 and built there the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, completed in 1989 and one of the largest churches in the world. Its cost, during a debt crisis when cocoa prices had collapsed, became a symbol of the regime's excesses.

The one-party system allowed rival parties only in 1990. When Houphouët died, a bitter succession began.

Henri Konan Bédié, Houphouët's successor, promoted 'ivoirité', a notion of true Ivorian identity used to exclude northerners and people of migrant descent, including the politician Alassane Ouattara. A 1999 coup, a flawed 2000 election won by Laurent Gbagbo and a failed coup attempt in 2002 split the country: rebels held the north, the government the south.

French and UN troops held a buffer zone for years. The 2010 election was meant to end the division, but both Gbagbo and Ouattara claimed victory; about 3,000 people died before Gbagbo was arrested in April 2011. He was later tried and acquitted at the International Criminal Court.

Under Ouattara the economy grew at 7–8% a year for much of the 2010s: new bridges, motorways, a fourth Abidjan bridge, the metro project and rising cocoa, gold and cashew output. Jihadists attacked Grand-Bassam's beach in 2016 and northern border posts in 2020–21.

Politics remains tightly controlled. Ouattara won a disputed third term in 2020 and a fourth in October 2025, after the main opposition candidates were excluded from the ballot.

About 32 million people live in Côte d'Ivoire, including several million of Burkinabè, Malian and other West African origin. Abidjan, with over six million people, is the largest French-speaking city in Africa after Kinshasa.

French is official, and Abidjan has made it its own through Nouchi, a street slang mixing French, Dioula and local languages, spread by music and social media. Dioula is the trade language of markets and the north.

Muslims, mainly in the north and among Dioula traders, and Christians, mainly in the south, are roughly equal in number. The Harrist church, founded after the Liberian prophet William Wadé Harris preached along the coast in 1913–15, is an African-initiated church with white-robed worshippers.

Traditional belief remains strong in masks, initiation societies and sacred forests. In the west, Dan and Guéré masks dance at festivals; some ceremonies are open to visitors, others closed to non-initiates.

About 40% of the world's cocoa comes from Ivorian farms, mostly small family plots in the forest belt. Farmers sell at a price set by the state each season. Deforestation for cocoa has cut the forest cover sharply since independence, and child labour remains a persistent concern in the supply chain. A small but growing chocolate industry now makes bars in Abidjan.

Abidjan is a music capital. Zouglou, born among students in the 1990s, set social commentary to dance rhythms; coupé-décalé, launched by Ivorian DJs in Paris clubs in 2002, spread across Africa with its flashy, money-throwing style. Alpha Blondy's reggae and Magic System's hits made Ivorian music global, and the FEMUA festival in Anoumabo draws huge crowds.

The maquis, an open-air restaurant with grilled fish and chicken, attiéké, alloco and beer, is the heart of social life. At home, people eat foutou and rich sauces of palm nut, peanut and okra; in the north, tô and rice.

Crafts remain strong: Korhogo painted cloth, Baoulé gold weights and figures, Dan masks. The Musée des Civilisations in Abidjan holds a fine collection and has begun receiving objects returned from France.