Côte d'Ivoire
Capital: Yamoussoukro · West Africa
A mosaic of Akan kingdoms, Mande traders, and lagoon and forest peoples, famed for Baoulé sculpture, Senufo poro societies and Dan masks.
Ethnic communities
- Baoulé (Akan)Founded by Queen Abla Pokou; master sculptors
- SenufoPoro initiation society, kple-kple masks, balafon orchestras
- Dan (Yacouba)Renowned mask carvers of the west
- Agni & lagoon peoplesAkan kingdoms of the southeast (Indénié, Sanwi)
More communities of Côte d'Ivoire
- Baoulé · Akan heartland of gold-leaf masks and Queen Pokou's memory
- Bété · Forest farmers of vigorous funerary arts
- Anyi (Agni) · Indénié and Sanwi kingdoms of Akan gold regalia
- Dioula (Jula) · Mande merchant network from Kong's old empire
- Guéré (Wè) · Great-mask societies of the western forests
- Guro · Zaouli mask's home — beauty in motion (UNESCO)
- Attié · Lagoon-belt planters of gold-weight heritage
- Ebrié · Abidjan's first people — lagoon generations classes
- Abron (Brong) · Akan kingdom astride the Ghana border
- Malinké · Northwestern Mande farmers of Samori's memory
- Koulango & Lobi · Northeast farmers with shrine-sculpture traditions
- Adjoukrou & Abbey · Lagoon peoples of palm-oil wealth
- Nzima · Coastal Akan of Apollonia's lagoon trade
Languages
Major languages: Baoulé, Dioula, Bété, Senufo, French
Language families: Niger-Congo (Kwa, Mande, Gur, Kru)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Kong Empire
- • Indénié
- • Sanwi
- • Baoulé chiefdoms
Heritage sites
- • Historic town of Grand-Bassam
- • Sudanese-style mosques of the north (UNESCO)
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Côte d'Ivoire
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Music & the artsb. 1953
Alpha Blondy
Reggae
Sings in Dioula, French, English, Arabic and Hebrew, and used reggae to argue for reconciliation through Côte d'Ivoire's political crises.
- Sportb. 1978
Didier Drogba
Football
Chelsea's Champions League talisman whose televised appeal after qualifying for the 2006 World Cup is credited with helping halt Côte d'Ivoire's civil conflict.
- Politics & liberation1905–1993
Félix Houphouët-Boigny
Statecraft
Doctor and planter who abolished forced labour in French West Africa in 1946, then governed Côte d'Ivoire for 33 years through a period of rapid growth.
Deep-dive community profiles
Agni (Anyi)
The Akan kingdoms of eastern Côte d'Ivoire — Indénié, Sanwi and Moronou, founded by migrants from Asante, keepers of gold regalia and stools, and rulers of one kingdom that has twice petitioned to secede.
Open deep profile →Akan (Asante & Fante)
Matrilineal peoples of the Ghana–Côte d'Ivoire forest belt whose Asante Empire, Golden Stool, kente cloth and adinkra symbol system created one of Africa's most sophisticated courtly civilizations.
Open deep profile →Baoulé
The people of Queen Abla Pokou's sacrifice — an Akan nation that crossed the Comoé into the Ivorian heartland, whose spirit-spouse figures, goli masks and gold-weight heritage made them central to Côte d'Ivoire's history and art.
Open deep profile →Bété
The forest people of Côte d'Ivoire's centre-west — farmers of the cocoa belt whose gbégbé dance and whose leaders have been at the centre of the country's politics, and whose region was the front line of two civil wars.
Open deep profile →Dan (Yacouba)
The forest people of the Ivorian west — carvers of the serene, polished masks that Modigliani's generation studied, keepers of the leopard society, the stilt-dancers who tower over festivals, and a culture where every mask is a spirit with a name and a temper.
Open deep profile →Dioula
The traders whose language became a lingua franca — Mande merchants who carried Islam and commerce along the kola routes for six centuries, built the mud mosques of the northern savanna, and whose name in Côte d'Ivoire came to mean northerner and, for a time, foreigner.
Open deep profile →Grebo
The people of Liberia's south-eastern corner — early converts and early rebels, who produced the country's first indigenous Episcopal bishop and also its most serious nineteenth-century risings against settler rule.
Open deep profile →Guro (Kweni)
The carvers of central Côte d'Ivoire — a people of the forest-savanna edge whose masks, with their long faces, high foreheads and painted horns, are among the most collected in West African art, and whose Zaouli dance has become a national emblem.
Open deep profile →Kru
The seafarers of the Atlantic coast — canoe crews so skilled in surf that European ships hired them for two centuries, who refused to be enslaved and were feared for it, and whose men worked the whole coast from Freetown to the Congo.
Open deep profile →Lobi
The fiercely independent farmers of the Black Volta — builders of fortress-houses (soukala), carvers of the bateba shrine figures that stand for the thila spirits, and a people who never accepted a chief, a king or a colonial officer without a fight.
Open deep profile →Mossi
The kingdom-builders of the Volta basin, whose Mogho Naba still holds court in Ouagadougou every Friday — a 500-year unbroken monarchy of horsemen, farmers and mask societies on the West African savanna.
Open deep profile →Nzema
The people of Ghana's south-western corner — Akan-speaking coastal farmers and fishers who gave the continent Kwame Nkrumah, whose Kundum festival lasts weeks, and whose stilt village of Nzulezo stands on a lagoon.
Open deep profile →Senufo
Master farmers and carvers of the middle Volta savanna whose Poro initiation cycle takes twenty-one years, whose champion-cultivator staffs and firespitter masks rank among Africa's great sculpture, and whose balafon orchestras earned UNESCO honors.
Open deep profile →