The History of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast): A Quick Rundown (Old)
A Relative Success Story of Dysfunctional Growth Increasing Regional Tensions, French Interference, Cocoa Farmers, & Election Denial
Don’t you hate it when people generalize Africa without knowing a thing about a specific country? Let’s fix that.
Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) is a French-speaking country of ~30 million people. After Portuguese explorer Fernão Gomes brought back elephant tusks from the area in the 15th century, cartographers from Lisbon called the area the “Tooth Coast” or the “Ivory Coast”.
As of 2021, Ivory Coast has the 2nd highest living standards in West Africa. It is a lower middle income country (LMIC) like Morocco, Bangladesh, or India though it manufacturers far less than those nations.
In terms of trade, Ivory Coast imports food, oil, medicine, cars machinery, and electricity mainly from China, France and Nigeria. 11% of the land is arable (land that can be ploughed and used to grow crops) which is used by 40% of the population to grow coffee, palm oil, groundnuts, rubber, and cocoa (the country’s #2 export). Ivory Coast’s other billion dollar exports are gold (#1), rubber (#3), refined petrol (#4), nuts (#5), and cocoa past (#6).
Pre-Colonialism: A Borderland Between Two Worlds
Before France created Ivory Coast, the land was a frontier zone between:
The North: Mande/Mandinka-speaking Savanna polities tied to the Sahel trade routes.
The South: Akan-speaking forest Kingdoms with gold mines.
These worlds traded, raided, and fought for centuries.
The Akan: Bonoman (Southern Ivory Coast)
Around the 12th century, Akan clans struck gold in the Bono Manso–Tain–Bia basin (where modern Ghana & Ivory Coast meet). Villages merged into chiefdoms, forming Bonoman, the region’s first major polity. See map below:
Two capitals emerged:
Bono Manso (a political capital)
Begho (a commercial town)
The Akan clans traded with the Mandinka caravans linked to Wagadou-Ghana and later Mali. The Akan sold gold & slaves to the Mandinka merchants. In return, the Mandinka gave the Akan salt, copper, horses, cloth, and other goods. Through trade, Muslim merchants settled in Begho, but the Bono maintained their Akan religion.
Bonoman Successor States:
In the 15th-17th centuries, Bonoman’s central authority collapsed. Akan peoples migrated west, deeper into modern day Ivory Coast. The Bonoman successor states were:
The Jaman (Gyaman) Kingdom
The-Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
The Coastal Akan chiefs developed a lucrative trade with the Europeans. Initially (1470-1550), the Portuguese explorers sought gold and ivory, giving the region its name the Ivory Coast. The British preferred calling the area the Windward Coast.
But after the 1550s, the slave trade exploded. Grand-Bassam and nearby ports became slave depots.
The supply chain:
Akan chiefs hire African mercenaries or bandits to raid inland villages
Captured people (war prisoners, kidnapped victims, criminals, debtors, accused witches) were marched to the coast
Nzema chiefs sold them to European ships for guns, rum, cloth, or tobacco
Scale: This region had the fewest slaves exported across the Atlantic. ~350K slaves were taken from this area over the 350 years, much less than the Gold Coast, where 1.2M were taken. This is because in the Gold Coast, the Ashanti were a slave trading machine.
Mali: Northern Ivory Coast
To learn more about Mali in depth, click here. I’ll give a cliff-notes version as it relates to modern Ivory Coast.
After Wagadou (the Ghana Empire, which does NOT border modern Ghana!) collapsed due to Moroccan raids and internal dysfunction in the 1000s, two powers competed: Mali and Sosso. Mali won.
Mali and Akan trade:
Akan kingdoms & chieftaincies sold: Gold, ivory, and captured slaves
Mali sold: Horses, weapons, salt, & cloth
The trade benefited both sides. The Akan needed horses (which couldn’t survive long in tsetse fly zones) for warfare. Mali needed gold and slaves for the trans-Saharan trade to North Africa.
Eventually, Mali’s hegemony was subsumed by Songhai. But the Saadi Dynasty of Morocco killed the Songhai Empire in 1591 at the Battle of Tondibi.
As for Mali, by 1610 AD, Mali fractured into petty chiefdoms. Only Mali-Kurussa bordered modern day Northern Ivory Coast, continuing their trade.
Mali Kurussa
Kong Empire
In the early 1700s, the Jula merchant-warrior aristocracy unified northern Ivory coast around the city of Kong, replacing older Mandinka polities like Mali-Kurussa.
The Kong Empire was a Muslim state that had literate Muslim clerics who ran madrasas. They had a dual strategy:
The traded peacefully with powerful Akan states like the Gyaman
They raided weaker, decentralized Akan villages like the Anyi for more captives, then sold them north to the Sahelian states
By 1700s in the South, the Ashanti Empire (my people) emerged as the dominate Akan power by King Osei Tutu (centered in modern Ghana in Kumasi).
Ashanti Empire
By 1800, the Ashanti Empire crushed the Bonoman successor states like Gyaman, bringing most Akan territories under its control. The Baoulé, who now live in Southern Ivory Coast, are Akan refugees who fled Ashanti slave raids & expansion.
By the 1800s, modern day Ivory Coast divided between the Northern sphere of Muslim Mandinka Kong Kingdom and the Southern sphere from the pagan Akan people (Baoulé, Anyi, Nzima).
Most people in these regions lived in village clusters, their contact with powers filtered through long-distance traders (Jula merchants or Akan middlemen).
Bassam
For centuries, Grand-Bassam was a slave-trading port where Nzema chiefs sold captives to European ships. French traders stayed at the posts, but lcoal chiefs controlled the coast. French people usually got very ill when they entered the African interior due to lack of immunity to tropical diseases like malaria.
In 1818, Louis XVIII abolished the slave trade, so Bassam could no longer be a place to traffic slaves. Instead Bassam shifted to be a hub of “legitimate commerce” (palm oil, ivory, etc.).
Quinine Revolution (1870s):
Everything changed when Europeans developed quinine as an antimalarial drug. Before quinine, ~25% of Europeans died of malaria within months of entering Africa’s interior. By 1875, mortality dropped to 1.7%. French forces could suddently penetrate inland without mass death. Grand-Bassam became France’s colonial foothold and the 1st capital of French Ivory Coast.
French Colonialism:
French Conquest (1880s–1890s)
At the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, European powers established the framework of “effective occupation”: only powers that demonstrated real control through treaties, military presence, or administration would receive recognition from other European powers.
Initially, France made trading posts and French captains signed treaties with chiefs to establish effective occupation. But over time, France had to engage in war.
Between 1886-1898, France launched military campaigns to enforce its claim. It beat the Baoule in 1892, crushed Samori Toure’s Wassoulou Empire in 1895, and conquered the Kong by 1898. After conquest, Ivory Coast was created.
Here’s a map showing that the new borders don’t map to pre-colonial states:
French Ivory Coast (1893-1960)
FHB ended forced labor (1946), negotiated favorable deals for cocoa & coffee farmers, and fought for political autonomy.
Between 1946-1958, The French government paid 70% of total public investment in Ivory Coast and more than 30% of annual recurring costs. France built roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals without forced labor.
Thanks to Felix and other representatives, colonies became somewhat autonomous “overseas territories” by the late 50s. A new class of Ivorian middle class farmers emerged, and Felix was their champion.
By the early 1950s, Ivory Coast’s economy ranked as one of France’s better colonies, right below French Congo, but better all of French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). The tropical South was perfect for cocoa and coffee, the colony’s economic engine. Jungle hardwoods provided valuable lumber exports.
The French built Ivory Coast on forced labor (basically slavery, but workers would be “paid” in beads or torn clothes). Ivorians made railroads, roads, and plantations while exporting cocoa to French merchants.
Cultural divide: France pursued a policy of creating “evolues” (“Evolved Africans”) who adopted French language, European attire, and Catholicism. The Akan (especially the Baoule) were the most receptive, converting them from paganism to Catholicism, becoming the African elite. The Mandinka maintained Islam didn’t receive as much investment. This created Ivory Coast’s defining split: Christian, cocoa rich South vs. Muslim, poor North.
The Independence Referendum (1958):
France offered its African colonies a choice: remain in the French Union as autonomous territories or leave entirely. 99.99% of Ivorians voted to stay in the French Community. Only Guinea left.
The Prime Minister, FHB, wanted Ivory Coast to remain an overseas territory of France as long as possible, fearing that Ivory Coast wasn’t economically ready for independence yet. After Guinea, Senegal & Mali formed a union to gain independence, then other French African countries followed suit. Felix then reluctantly declared independence by 1960. However, all French colonies (save Guinea), sought French aid, French advisors, and stayed on the CFA franc currency.
First President (1960-1993): FHB
FHB (1960-1980): The Ivorian “Miracle”:
Félix established a capitalist economy (relative to other African countries), but he smashed his country’s democratic constitution and, created a centralized, authoritarian state. Geopolitically, he was pro-French and was anti-African unity that Kwame Nkrumah advocated.
What went well:
He leaned on the French military and maintained a significant number of French public servants. While other African countries, Africanized their civilian servants, FHB resisted replacing competent French civil servants with untrained Ivorian bureaucrats.
He led at the right time. They was a global cocoa & coffee price spike, which benefited the farmers.
There wasn’t just an increase in prices, he also expanded production. By the late 1970s, Ivory Coast surpassed Ghana in cocoa production.
He opened Ivory Coast to foreign capital and immigration from France and Lebanon. Ivory Coast quickly grew from a low-income to lower-middle income country due the commodity boom, skilled immigration, and government investment in infrastructure.
What were issues:
However, the economic growth created dysfunctional wealth inequality: the Christian South became rich from selling cocoa, pineapples, nuts, wood, and coffee and the Muslim North was still poor. Half of Ivory Coast’s export revenues came from the south selling cocoa and coffee.
Also, Ivory Coast’s state-owned marketing board monopoly bought coffee & cocoa from farmers at low prices below the international price. The board would buy at low prices and then sell globally a t high prices, pocketing the difference. Though, the Ivorian board paid farmers much more than Ghanaian farmers, leading Ghanaians to illegally smuggle cocoa into Ivory Coast for better prices like my uncle did.
Diversification attempts: (1970-1980):
FHB subsidized and protected manufacturing industries in petrochemicals, textiles, shoes, and cars. But these industries remained uncompetitive and dependent on state support. He also gave licenses for oil exploration. He hoped that French Total would find oil, but it wasn’t of significant quantity. Meanwhile, the Muslim North was growing in population due to immigrants from Burkina Faso & Mali and higher birth rates.
The Commodity Crash (1977-1992)
In the late 1970s, Ivory Coast’s principle exports crashed. Coffee went from $3.22 in 1977 all the way down to $0.38 by 1992.
Cocoa went from $4K per metric tone to $1K over the same time period.
With less foreign currency and government revenue, Ivory Coast relied more on foreign borrowing.
Eventually he was running out of foreign currency and sought IMF loans twice, which required fiscal prudence and reduced government programs (which meant that people paid higher out-of-pocket costs for healthcare, and paid tuition for middle school).
Weakening cocoa prices, meant less government revenue to subsidize textile, cars, and chemical manufacturing. Less subsidies and poor IMF advice of opening up Ivory industry to international competition too early, eradicated Ivorian manufacturing by 1986. The farmers were suffering due to low prices. In reality, the state-owned marketing board was just squeezing incomes from the farmers, which prevented them from maximizing incomes, amassing savings, and making larger farms. By 1987, Ivory Coast defaulted on its $10B debt.
Since Ivory Coast was the world’s leader of cocoa production, he thought he could influence global cocoa prices. Felix tried to save his economy during the cocoa price collapse by trying to artificially raise prices. He made an artificial price floor of $2 per kg ($1814 per ton) in 1988 and encourage other cocoa producers to join him in creating the Cocoa Producers Alliance, a cocoa OPEC (an international cocoa cartel). Felix invited his country, Ivory Coast, along with Ghana, Gabon, Brazil, Cameroon, Ecuador, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Sao Tome, Togo, and Trinidad to try to cartelize the cocoa prices. None of them cared to cartelize or lower production to boost prices. Malaysia, Brazil and Indonesia increased production, Felix never got that price bump he wanted and the cartel was never formed. Why? Besides Ghana, none of these countries depended on Cocoa the same way Ivory Coast did. To everyone else, the cartel was seen as sacrificing foreign earnings to help Ivory Coast.
This diminishing economy led to a massive brain drain of educated Ivorians leaving to Canada or France. To obtain the second IMF loan in the 1990s, the World Bank necessitated democratic reforms. So by 1990, Felix was still president & Ouattara was appointed Prime Minister.
2nd President (1993-1999) Henri Bedie
Due to commodity price decline, the economy under Bedie was dying. Ivory Coast became low income again. Bedie did not want the former Prime Minister & Muslim Northerner Ouattara to ever be elected. Bedie made constitutional changes to systemically prevent Northerners from being elected (and made laws saying both parents need to be Ivorian) and made anti-Northern, anti-Mande, anti-Dioula rhetoric called “Ivorite”. In 1999, Bedie was overthrown in a coup by military leader, Robert Guei.
3rd President Robert Guei (1999-2000)
Guei tried to remove corruption, get the economy going again, but he lost in an election in 2000, to a Christian Bete, named Gbagbo. During all of this, “Ivorite” continued.
4th President Laurent Gbagbo (2000-2010) + Civil War
In 2000, Northerners took to the street because their Ouattara wasn’t allowed to run for office. Gbagbo’s forces killed the Northerners. Northerners rebelled and took control the north of the country.
An attempted peace was made in 2003, but it was proven nonsense when Gbagbo and militia groups started killing Northerners with death squads. Eventually Gbagbo’s government accidently attacked French & UN peacekeepers. Corrupt French President who was later jailed, Jacques Chirac, was upset with Gbagbo. Gbagbo said “It was an accident”. Chirac didn’t care what Gbagbo said so he decided to burn down the Ivorian airforce and kill 30+ Ivorians. To many Ivorians, this was seen as France blatantly trying to depose their president with UN backing. So, pro-Gbagbo militias, “Pan-African Youth & Patriots” started to attack French people, French troops, French hotels and burn French houses to wipe out any perception of neocolonialism to say “Screw You Chirac”. By 2010, the civil war ended. Ivory Coast is reunited and Northerners can vote. France, with UN backing, brokered a peace deal and watched the election between Bete Gbagbo vs. Northern Muslim Ouattara vs. Baoule Bedie. Ouattara won with 54%. African Union, France, and the rest of the world recognized Ouattara.
But Gbagbo said the election was null & void due to voter fraud and said many of the Northern votes were from Mali and Burkina Faso (since there are Mandinka people there and they emigrated to Ivory Coast for opportunities.) Another Civil War began. Pro-Gbagbo rebels bomb hundreds of people pro-Ouattara venues, 400K people having been displaced. France says enough is enough, France aided the Northern forces to storm the capital to kick out Gbagbo. Despite the civil wars, the Ivorian economy was still growing, and it became lower-middle income again. This is mainly due to the fact that the CFA franc is anchored to the euro, so even if European investor confidence drops in Ivory Coast, the value of the CFA franc to the euro is maintained.
2010- Present, Ouattara
After 27 years of political nonsense, a coup, 2 civil wars, with French & UN intervention, Ouattara is finally president. Unfortunately due to the civil wars, he came into office defaulting on a $29M payment on its bond.
Cocoa prices up:
However, Ouattara came to office at a good time, cocoa prices have soared from $2200 in 2012 to $3400 per ton in 2023. In May 2024, the cocoa price is over $8000!. In addition, Ouattara consolidated many government-owned marketing boards into a central agency, the Cafe Cacoa Council (CCC) and increased the farmers’ share of the cocoa prices.
Thanks to both corporations and government policy from Gbagbo and Ouattara, Ivory Coast has started to process cocoa. Between 2000 to 2012, Ivorian cocoa grindings have almost doubled from ~230K metric tons to 450K metric tons. Below you’ll see how much better Ivorian firms are at value-addition & production to cocoa than Ghana is:
Debt Relief:
The rises in cocoa and economic growth helped Ivory Coast pay its debt payments. But also by 2012, Ouattara signed up for the World Bank’s “Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative”. By following the IMF’s neoliberal policy prescriptions, The World Bank & IMF erased $4B of Ivorian debt.
Eurobond Borrowing:
After debt relief, Ouattara repeatedly borrowed via eurobonds (2014-2019), using new loans to pay off old debt and fund infrastructure. So far its working, Ivory Coast’s credit rating improved from “default" in 2011 to BB- in 2023, matching South Africa.
Selling State Owned Firms: He has sold stakes in government owned businesses and used the proceeds to make new roads and other infrastructure.
Relations with China:
Lastly, Ouattara has opened up significantly to Chinese investment & trade. Ivory Coast is a member nation of the Belt and Road Initiative. As of 2022, China has invested $7.5B in Ivory Coast and lent $3B to Ivory Coast (~4% of Ivory Coast’s $70B GDP as of 2022), mainly in infrastructure projects winning major building contracts. This has helped Ivory Coast finance projects like:
The expansion of the Port of Abidjan, a $934M project, helping Ivory Coast become a regional trade hub. The project is financed by China’s Export-Import Bank.
As a result of improved relations between Ivory Coast and China, in 2021, Ivory Coast has imported $3B of Chinese clothes, machines, metal products, vehicles, food, shoes and etc. Meanwhile, Ivory Coast has been providing $300M in Rubber, $100M in crude oil, and $100M in manganese. China brings manganese ore from Ivory Coast to China, and then China processes the manganese, where China has a near monopoly on refining the commodity. Manganese is a crucial mineral to make electric vehicles, electric rechargeable batteries and etc. Teslas and Battery Powered Volkswagens would not exist, unless China dug manganese from South African, Gabonese, Australian, Brazilian, Ghanaian, and Ivorian dirt (These are the top 6 manganese ore producers in order). Ivory Coast contributes to China producing 90% of the world’s manganese products.
.svg){kind=link}
Ouattara has just won his 3rd term in office, which was controversial and minor protests broke out. Overall, I am very optimistic about Ivory Coast. Most African economies have been suffering a lost decade since 2014, with almost no growth at all in living standards. Countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, Namibia peaked in the early to mid 2010s, while Ivorian incomes have continued to rise, demonstrating that Ivorian growth isn’t dependent on resource booms as it was in the 1970s.
Conclusions
Cocoa dependence has damaged Ivory Coast in the past. As people’s living standards plummeted the moment cocoa prices plunged. Thankfully, Ivory Coast is not as dependent on selling raw cocoa as it was in the past.
IMF loans, despite giving the needed capital, puts intense structural change in the government’s policies which restrict the solutions that African leaders can implement.
Sources:
The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor by Martin Meredith
The Slave Coast of West Africa (1550-1750) by John D Hargreaves, Michael Twaddle, and Terence Ranger
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/what-next-for-ivory-coast/
African Development Bank Group data: https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/ADF-BD-IF-2006-37-EN-COTE-DIVOIRE-PCR-MACRO-ECONOMIC-AND-STRUCTURAL-ADJUSTMENT-PROGRAMME-1994-1996_.PDF
"The Impacts of the World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes on Africa: The Case Study of Cote D'Ivoire, Senegal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe".
It’s very helpful when you put the economic numbers into categories to show comparative statistics to nations in other parts of the world. It helps with perspective. Thanks.
Great job!