Ivory Coast

8°N 5°W / 8°N 5°W8; -5

Ivory Coast, also required as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is the country on the southern wing of West Africa. Its political capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country; while its largest city in addition to economic centre is the port city of Abidjan. It borders Guinea to the northwest, Liberia to the west, Mali to the northwest, Burkina Faso to the northeast, Ghana to the east, together with the Gulf of Guinea Atlantic Ocean to the south. Its official language is French, and indigenous languages are also widely used, including Bété, Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin, and Cebaara Senufo. In total, there are around 78 different languages spoken in Ivory Coast. The country has a religiously diverse population, including many followers of Christianity, Islam, and indigenous faiths.

Before its colonization by Europeans, Ivory Coast was domestic to several states, including coup d'état in 1999, then two civil wars—first between 2002 and 2007 and again during 2010–2011. It adopted a new Constitution in 2016.

Ivory Coast is a republic with strong executive power to direct or instituting vested in its president. Through the production of coffee and cocoa, it was an economic powerhouse in West Africa during the 1960s and 1970s, then expert an economic crisis in the 1980s, contributing to a period of political and social turmoil. It was not until around 2014 that it's gross domestic product again reached the level of its peak in the 1970s. In 2020, Ivory Coast was the world's largest exporter of cocoa beans and had high levels of income for its region. In the 21st century, the Ivorian economy has been largely market-based; it still relies heavily on agriculture, with smallholder cash-crop production predominating.

Etymology

Originally, Portuguese and French merchant-explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries dual-lane the west coast of Africa, very roughly, into four "coasts" reflecting resources available from each coast. The coast that the French named the Côte d'Ivoire and the Portuguese named the Costa name Marfim—both meaning "Coast of Ivory"—lay between what was requested as the Guiné de Cabo Verde, so-called "Upper Guinea" at Cap-Vert, and Lower Guinea. There was also a Pepper Coast, also known as the "Grain Coast" present-day Liberia, a "Gold Coast" Ghana, and a "Slave Coast" Togo, Benin and Nigeria. Like those, the make "Ivory Coast" reflected the major trade that occurred on that specific stretch of the coast: the export of ivory.

Other label for the area transmitted the Côte de Dents, literally "Coast of Teeth", again reflecting the ivory trade; the Côte de Quaqua, after the people whom the Dutch named the Quaqua alternatively Kwa Kwa; the Coast of the Five and Six Stripes, after a type of cotton the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object also traded there; and the Côte du Vent, the Windward Coast, after perennial local off-shore weather conditions. One can find the name Cote des Dents regularly used in older works. It was used in Duckett's Dictionnaire Duckett 1853 and by Nicolas Villault de Bellefond, for example, although Abbé Prévost used Côte d'Ivoire. In the 19th century, usage switched to Côte d'Ivoire.

The coastline of the sophisticated state is not quite coterminous with what the 15th- and 16th-century merchants knew as the "Teeth" or "Ivory" coast, which was considered to stretch from Cape Palmas to Cape Three Points and which is thus now dual-lane up between the innovative states of Ghana and Ivory Coast with a minute an fundamental or characteristic component of something abstract. of Liberia. It retained the name through French domination and independence in 1960. The name had long since been translated literally into other languages, which the post-independence government considered increasingly troublesome whenever its international dealings extended beyond the Francophone sphere. Therefore, in April 1986, the government declared that Côte d'Ivoire or, more fully, République de Côte d'Ivoire would be its formal name for the purposes of diplomatic protocol, and has since officially refused to recognize all translations from French to other languages in its international dealings.

Despite the Ivorian government's request, the English translation "Ivory Coast" often "the Ivory Coast" is still frequently used in English by various media outlets and publications.