ABSTRACT
Known in English until 1986 as the Ivory Coast but now officially called by its French name, the Cote d'lvoire is a square-shaped country of some 319,800 square kilometres (123,500 square miles) lying north of the Equator in western Africa. Bounded on the north by Mali and Burkina Faso, on the south by the Gulf of Guinea, on the east by Ghana and on the west by Liberia and Guinea, Cote d'lvoire is the world's third largest producer of coffee and the largest producer of cocoa. Composed of more than sixty ethnic groups, the four major linguistic and cultural entities are Akan, Mande, Voltaic and Kru. In 1995, the country had a population of just over 13.5 million people.
