Some of my readers may know of the Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast; hereafter, RCI) as the once-prosperous and successful country, once a colony of France, then showcase for neoliberal development policies. In this case, it may be a bit unfair to saddle the Washington Consensus with the blame for RCI's political malaise, since, like Nigeria, it suffers an awkward combination of ethno-linguistic groups. In this case, the situation is slightly more stable: while none of Nigeria's 250 groups represent more than a third of the total, the Akan of southeastern RCI constitute 42%, while Gur (Volta) and Mandes account for one sixth each, Krous and Southern Mandes another tenth (CIA WFB). However, these populations are very concentrated in specific regions of the country. The most important division of the country, as usual, is between the (predominantly Muslim) north and the (mainly Christian or animist) south; in addition, about 20% of the population (i.e., 3.5 million) is foreign-born, and predominantly Muslim. As was the case in Liberia and much of Nigeria until 1999¹, there has usually been little sectarian violence [*]. Traditionally, this has been the case with the RCI as well. However, there is an unfortunate coincidence insofar as the predominantly Muslim expatriate population in Abidjan is coreligionist with the separatist rebels in the North and in the West.² As a result, Muslims are coming under intense pressure from angry mobs in the South (Scotsman).

BACKGROUND: Côte d’Ivoire belongs to a region of Africa with a long, ugly experience with European colonialism.³ Needless to say, this part of Africa was a target for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the single worst atrocity in recorded history. However, the slave trade mostly bypassed the Ivory Coast; the name comes from a brief flourish in ivory, which ended after elephants were nearly wiped out. The RCI became a protectorate of France in 1842, then a colony in 1893 after a half-century of mostly private management [*]. The neglect continued until 1906, when Gabriel Angoulvant was appointed governor. Angoulvant undertook the costly conquest of the country, then set up a system of indirect rule analogous to that created by Frederick Lugard in Nigeria. However, the French policy of assimilation was applied, as a project to transform the country into a French society. Most of the inhabitants of the colonies were subjects of France with no political rights. Moreover, they were drafted for work in mines, on plantations, as porters, and on public projects as part of their tax responsibility. They were also expected to serve in the military and were subject to the indigénat, a separate system of law [*] The system of labor corvèes applied to plantations and logging, so Ivoirians were effectively enslaved in order to partake of the environmental degradation of the region.

(For this reason, imperialism should be understood as an ecological calamity as well as a human rights one.)

The French did grant citizenship to a cadre of educated elite, who tended to identify with France, at least to the extent of retarding nationalism. Ironically, the instrument by which the French retained control over the country after independence was in fact the country's Communist Party, which was strangled by the colonial authorities, then taken over and "reformed" by Felix Houphouët-Boigny [*]. In many respects, when the country became "independent" in 1960, it was the textbook case of how to retain the benefits of colonialism without most of the costs.
SOURCES: Library of Congress country study; EIN energy profile (includes summary of recent history); BBC country profile; Polity IV Country Report 2002 (Integrated Network for Societal Conflict Research; more analysis of political development); CIA World Fact Book entry; Wikipedia; maps of Côte d’Ivoire (University of Texas)

"Cote d'Ivoire: Statistical Appendix" (PDF; OECD statistics); IMF statistics search (for all countries). I was able to pull up IMF data on PPP per capita GDP going back to 1980. It turns out Côte d’Ivoire's income per capita has grown at an average rate of 0.9% in the last quarter century. Growth has been zero since '96.