Ivory Coast

• 1. Introduction

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  Ivory Coast holds a distinction that few nations on earth can claim: it supplies more cocoa beans to the world than any other country. Every chocolate bar, every truffle, every cup of cocoa traces a supply chain that runs back to this West African republic. Yet the country that feeds the world's sweet tooth has itself endured two civil wars, a military coup, and a disputed election that nearly tore it apart. How did a nation that for twenty years posted nearly 10% annual economic growth end up in a decade of armed conflict? And how did it pull back from the edge to become, by 2023, the second-highest GDP per capita economy in West Africa? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer. The answers travel from prehistoric tool fragments found in humid forests, through the courts of 18th-century Muslim empires, into the presidential palace in Yamoussoukro, and back out again.

• 2. A Coast Named for Teeth

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  Portuguese merchant-explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries divided the west coast of Africa into rough stretches named for whatever commodity flowed from each shore. They called one stretch the Costa do Marfim, meaning 'coast of ivory', which the French later rendered as Côte d'Ivoire. Neighbouring stretches became the Pepper Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Slave Coast, covering the territories of present-day Liberia, Ghana, and the area around Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. Local traders had another name for the same shore: the Côte de Dents, literally the 'Coast of Teeth', which pointed to the same trade in elephant tusks. A third name, the Côte du Vent, or Windward Coast, reflected the persistent offshore winds that sailors encountered along that stretch of the Gulf of Guinea.

  The coastline that Portuguese traders described did not map exactly onto the modern state. Their 'Ivory' or 'Teeth' coast ran from Cape Palmas to Cape Three Points, a stretch now divided between the modern states of Ghana and Ivory Coast, with a sliver falling inside Liberia. The name survived French rule, independence in 1960, and decades of use in other languages. In April 1986, the Ivorian government formally declared that Côte d'Ivoire would be its sole diplomatic name in all languages, refusing to recognise translations. Despite that request, major English-language outlets have largely continued to use 'Ivory Coast'. The BBC uses it in news reports. The Economist has stated a preference for it explicitly. ABC News, Fox News, The Times, The New York Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation all rely on the English version predominantly or exclusively. The CIA World Factbook and international sport bodies including FIFA and the IOC have chosen the French form.

• 3. Empires Before Europe

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  The earliest known human traces in Ivory Coast come from polished axes cut through shale, plus remnants of cooking and fishing, which archaeologists have interpreted as evidence of a significant population during the Upper Paleolithic period, somewhere between 15,000 and 10,000 BC, or at the minimum during the Neolithic period. The humid climate has not been kind to human remains, so the record is fragmentary. Historians believe the earliest inhabitants were eventually displaced or absorbed by groups who migrated south into the territory before the 16th century, including communities now identified by the place-names Ehotilé, Kotrowou, Zéhiri, Ega, and Diès.

  North African Berber traders were the first to document the region systematically, moving caravans of salt, slaves, gold, and other goods across the Sahara from as early as Roman times. The southern ends of those trade routes grew into major commercial centres: Djenné, Gao, and Timbuktu. By the 11th century, rulers of the great Sudanic empires had embraced Islam, and the faith spread southward into the northern regions of what is now Ivory Coast. The Ghana Empire, the earliest of those empires, reached the peak of its power in the 11th century with realms stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Timbuktu. The Mali Empire succeeded it and reached its height in the early 14th century, controlling a northwestern corner of present-day Ivory Coast around Odienné. Songhai then flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries before internal discord fractured it, pushing migrations southward toward the forest zone.

  Five states flourished in the pre-European modern period within what is now Ivory Coast. The Muslim Kong Empire was established by the Dyula in the early 18th century in the north-central region. The Abron kingdom of Gyaaman was established in the 17th century by an Akan group, the Abron, who had fled the developing Ashanti confederation in present-day Ghana. Bondoukou, which the Abron gradually came to dominate, drew Quranic scholars and students from across West Africa. In east-central Ivory Coast during the mid-17th century, other Akan groups established a Baoulé kingdom at Sakasso and two Agni kingdoms, Indénié and Sanwi. The Baoulé developed a highly centralised political structure under three successive rulers before the kingdom split into smaller chiefdoms. Descendants of the Agni kingdoms tried to retain their identity well after independence; as late as 1969, the Sanwi attempted to break away from Ivory Coast and form a separate kingdom.

• 4. The French Foothold

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  A French mission was established in 1687 at Assinie, near the border with what was then called the Gold Coast. Its survival was precarious for generations. Real French consolidation came in 1843-44, when French Admiral Louis Édouard Bouët-Willaumez signed treaties with the kings of the Grand-Bassam and Assinie regions, converting their territories into a French protectorate. Grand-Bassam became the colony's first capital. The arrangement required France to pay annual fees called coutumes to local chiefs in exchange for trading privileges, and disputes over those obligations were common.

  The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 caused the French government to temporarily pull back from its West African ambitions, leaving trading posts in the care of resident merchants. Grand-Bassam was left in the hands of Arthur Verdier, a shipper from Marseille, who in 1878 was named Resident of the Establishment of Ivory Coast. France resumed direct control in 1886. In 1887, Lieutenant Louis-Gustave Binger began a two-year journey through the interior that resulted in four treaties establishing French protectorates. That same year, Verdier's agent, Marcel Treich-Laplène, negotiated five additional agreements extending French influence from the headwaters of the Niger River Basin through Ivory Coast.

  In 1893, Ivory Coast became a formal French colony with Captain Binger appointed governor. Full pacification was not accomplished until 1915. One of the most formidable resisters was Samori Ture, who in the 1880s and 1890s was building the Wassoulou Empire across large parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast. His army could manufacture and repair its own firearms. French campaigns against him intensified through the mid-1890s until he was captured in 1898 and his empire dissolved.

  France imposed a head tax in 1900 to fund public works, which many Ivorians read as a humiliating reversal of the coutume arrangement. In 1905, France officially abolished slavery in most of French West Africa. From 1904 to 1958, Ivory Coast was part of the Federation of French West Africa. During World War I, France organised regiments from Ivory Coast to fight in France, and colony resources were rationed from 1917 to 1919. During World War II, the Vichy regime controlled the territory until 1943, when members of General Charles de Gaulle's provisional government took over all of French West Africa. The Brazzaville Conference of 1944 and subsequent reforms in 1946 granted French citizenship to all African subjects and abolished various forms of forced labour.

• 5. The Houphouët Years

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  Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the son of a Baoulé chief, founded the country's first agricultural trade union for African cocoa farmers in 1944. Angered that colonial policy favoured French plantation owners, union members united to recruit migrant workers for their own farms. Houphouët-Boigny was elected to the French Parliament in Paris within a year of forming the union. A year after his election, France abolished forced labour. France later appointed him as a minister, making him the first African to hold a ministerial post in a European government.

  By 1960, Ivory Coast was easily the most prosperous country in French West Africa, contributing over 40% of the region's total exports. When Houphouët-Boigny became the first president, his government set high prices for farmers' products, drawing a significant immigration of workers from neighbouring countries. Coffee production increased enough to push Ivory Coast to third place in world output, behind only Brazil and Colombia. By 1979, the country was the world's leading producer of cocoa. It also became Africa's leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil. The French community in Ivory Coast grew from around 30,000 before independence to 60,000 by 1980, most of them teachers, managers, and advisors. For twenty years, the economy maintained an annual growth rate of nearly 10%, the highest among Africa's non-oil-exporting countries.

  In the early 1980s, a global recession and a local drought sent the Ivorian economy into crisis. Overcutting of timber and collapsing sugar prices caused the country's external debt to triple. Crime rose in Abidjan as unemployment grew. In 1990, hundreds of civil servants went on strike alongside students protesting institutional corruption, forcing the government to open the political system to multi-party competition. Laurent Gbagbo, who later became president in 2000, had already been forced to flee the country in the 1980s after founding the Ivorian Popular Front against Houphouët-Boigny's wishes. Houphouët-Boigny died in 1993, having favoured Henri Konan Bédié as his successor.

• 6. Coup, Crisis, and Civil War

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  Henri Konan Bédié won re-election in October 1995. He then promoted a legal concept called Ivoirité, which was designed to exclude his political rival Alassane Ouattara, whose parents were from northern Ivory Coast, from running for president. Because a large share of the Ivorian population traced origins to neighbouring countries, the policy created broad ethnic tension. Bédié also excluded many potential opponents from the army. In late 1999, dissatisfied military officers staged a coup, placing General Robert Guéï in power. Bédié fled into exile in France.

  A presidential election in October 2000 saw Laurent Gbagbo face Guéï. A public uprising that resulted in around 180 deaths led to Guéï being swiftly replaced by Gbagbo. Ouattara was disqualified by the country's Supreme Court on grounds of alleged Burkinabé nationality, sparking violent protests from his supporters in the north.

  In the early hours of the 19th of September 2002, while Gbagbo was travelling in Italy, an armed uprising broke out. Troops scheduled for demobilisation mutinied and launched attacks in several cities. Government forces secured Abidjan by lunchtime but lost the north of the country, with rebel forces establishing a stronghold in the northern city of Bouaké. France deployed troops from its base in the country. Both sides accused France of supporting the other. The government claimed former president Guéï had led a coup attempt; state television showed his body in the street. Counter-claims said he and fifteen others had been killed at his home and the body moved to the street to implicate him. Ouattara took refuge in the German embassy after his home was burned down.

  On the 6th of November 2004, during an airstrike against rebel positions in Bouaké, nine French soldiers were killed. The Ivorian government called it a mistake; France called it deliberate. France responded by destroying most Ivorian military aircraft, including two Su-25 planes and five helicopters. A peace accord signed on the 4th of March 2007 brought Guillaume Soro, leader of the rebel New Forces, into the position of prime minister. UNICEF reported that by the war's end, water and sanitation infrastructure across the country had been greatly damaged.

• 7. The Second War and Recovery

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  Presidential elections postponed since 2005 were finally held in November 2010. Preliminary results showed Ouattara defeating Gbagbo. The Gbagbo-aligned Constitutional Council rejected the Electoral Commission's results for seven northern departments, declaring Gbagbo the winner with 51% of the vote instead of Ouattara with 54%. The African Union suspended Ivory Coast's membership. The UN Security Council adopted a resolution recognising Ouattara as the winner. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki was sent to mediate. Thousands of refugees fled the country.

  The crisis turned into the Second Ivorian Civil War. In Duékoué, hundreds of people were killed. UN and French forces took military action against Gbagbo. On the 11th of April 2011, Gbagbo was taken into custody after a raid on his residence. He was transferred to the International Criminal Court in January 2016 and declared acquitted but given a conditional release in January 2019, with Belgium designated as a host country.

  Since the return of peace and political stability in 2011, Ivory Coast's economy has recovered strongly. From 2012 to 2023, the economy grew by an average of 7.1% per year in real terms, the second-fastest rate of economic growth in Africa and the fourth-fastest in the world. By 2023, Ivory Coast had the second-highest GDP per capita in West Africa, behind Cape Verde. Despite that growth, the most recent survey from 2016 found that 46.1% of the population was still affected by multidimensional poverty. On the 1st of January 2025, Ivory Coast announced that France would withdraw its troops from the country. On the 20th of February 2025, France officially handed over its sole military base to local authorities; the base, previously home to the 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion, was renamed Camp Thomas d'Aquin Ouattara, in honour of the nation's first army chief.

• 8. Society and Culture

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  Around 78 languages are spoken in Ivory Coast, and the country's population of 31.5 million in 2024 made it the third-most populous country in West Africa. French is the official language and serves as a lingua franca, but a semi-creolised form of French called Nouchi has emerged in Abidjan and spread particularly among younger generations. Dyula functions as a trade language in much of the country, especially in the north, and is mutually intelligible with other Manding languages spoken across neighbouring countries.

  Ivory Coast is described as the most biodiverse country in West Africa, home to over 1,200 animal species, including 223 mammals and 702 birds, alongside 4,700 plant species. The country contains six terrestrial ecoregions and nine national parks; the largest, Assgny National Park, covers around 17,000 hectares or 42,000 acres.

  Association football is the country's most popular sport. The men's national team has appeared in the World Cup three times, in Germany in 2006, South Africa in 2010, and Brazil in 2014. It has won the Africa Cup of Nations three times, most recently in the 2023 edition, which Ivory Coast hosted. The country has produced internationally recognised footballers including Didier Drogba and Yaya Touré. In athletics, Gabriel Tiacoh won the silver medal in the men's 400 metres at the 1984 Olympics. Yamoussoukro is home to the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, the largest church building in the world. In December 2022, Ivory Coast's electric production company launched a commission to establish the country's first solar plant in Boundiali, with an installation of 37.5 MW backed by a 10-MW lithium battery energy storage system.