By Kasise Ricky Peprah
La Republique de La Côte d\’Ivoire, is a country located on the south coast of West Africa. Its political capital is Yamoussoukro in the centre of the country, while its economic capital and largest city is the port city of Abidjan. Yamoussoukro, is home to the largest church building in the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro.
French, the official language, is taught in schools and serves as a lingua franca in the country, with local indigenous languages also being widely used that include Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin, and Cebaara Senufo. In total, there are around 78 different languages spoken in La Cote d’Ivoire. One of the most common is Dyula, which acts as a trade language, as well as a language commonly spoken by the Muslim population.
Cote d’Ivoire borders Guinea to the northwest, Liberia to the west, Mali to the northwest, Burkina Faso to the northeast, Ghana to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) to the south and its population consists of adherents of Christianity, Islam and African Traditional Religion.
Before its colonization by Europeans, Cote d’Ivoire was home to several states, including Gyaaman, the Kong Empire and Baoulé. The area became a protectorate of France in 1843 and was consolidated as a French colony in 1893 amid the European scramble for Africa. It achieved independence in 1960, led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who ruled the country until 1993. Relatively stable by regional standards, La Cote d’Ivoire established close political and economic ties with its West African neighbors while at the same time maintaining close relations to the West, especially France. In 2014, its population stood a little shy of twenty-four million.
La Cote d’Ivoire has, for the region, a relatively high income per capita (US$1,662 in 2017) and plays a key role in transit trade for neighboring, landlocked countries. The country is the largest economy in the West African Economic and Monetary Union, constituting 40% of the monetary union\’s total GDP. It is also the world\’s largest exporter of cocoa beans, and the fourth-largest exporter of goods, in general, in sub-Saharan Africa (following South Africa, Nigeria, and Angola. Through the production of coffee and cocoa, the country was an economic powerhouse in West Africa during the 1960s and 1970s, though it went through an economic crisis in the 1980s, contributing to a period of political and social turmoil. It was not until around 2014 that the gross domestic product again reached the level of its peak in the 1970s.
In the 21st century, the Ivoirien economy has been largely market-based, and it still relies heavily on agriculture, with smallholder cash-crop production being predominant. In 2009, cocoa-bean farmers earned $2.53 billion for cocoa exports and were projected to produce 630,000 metric tons in 2013. La Cote D’Ivoire also has 100,000 rubber farmers who earned a total of $105 million in 2012.
Close ties to France since independence in 1960, diversification of agricultural exports, and encouragement of foreign investment have been factors in the economic growth of the country. In recent years, however, La Cote d’Ivoire has been subject to greater competition and falling prices in the global marketplace for its primary agricultural crops: coffee and cocoa. That, compounded with high internal corruption, makes life difficult for the cash-crop grower and the economy writ large.
It must be noted however the La Cote d’Ivoire’s economy has grown faster than that of most other African countries since independence and one possible reason for this might be taxes on export agriculture. La Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Kenya were exceptions as their rulers were themselves large cash-crop producers, and the newly independent countries desisted from imposing punitive rates of taxation on export agriculture, with the result that their economies did well.
La Cote experienced a coup d\’état in 1999 and two religiously-grounded civil wars, first between 2002 and 2007 and again during 2010–2011, all further exacerbating it economic woes, but that was not to endure. The country has largely been at peace since 2011, enjoying some of the highest economic growth rates globally, especially during the period 2012-16. Still by far the world’s most important cocoa producer, the former French colony is well on its way to reclaiming its status as a dynamic driving force of the West African regional economy.
