Côte d’Ivoire

Abidjan — a city of 5 million, the largest city in Francophone West Africa, built on a lagoon with the Plateau business district (skyscrapers from the cocoa boom of the 1970s, when Côte d’Ivoire was the world’s largest cocoa producer) — the Cocody neighbourhood (the finest market in Abidjan, the Marche de Cocody), the Treichville neighbourhood (nightlife, maquis (open-air restaurants), attiéké (cassava couscous) vendors) and the waterfront of the Ebrié Lagoon.

💡 Côte d’Ivoire produces approximately 40% of the world’s cocoa — the highest share of any country for any commodity in the world. The Ivorian cocoa economy feeds roughly 6 million people directly and supplies the majority of cocoa used in European and North American chocolate. Every bar of Cadbury, Lindt or Kit-Kat has a significant probability of containing Ivorian cocoa.

A full day in Treichville — the liveliest neighbourhood in Abidjan, a working-class district on the southern lagoon island with the Marché de Treichville (the largest market in the city, with fresh fish, fufu vendors, cloth merchants and the constant sound of Coupé-Décalé and Zouglou music from every shop) and an evening at a maquis (an open-air restaurant under a corrugated tin roof, eating grilled fish, alloco (fried plantain) and attiéké — the defining Ivorian meal).

💡 Coupé-Décalé (a genre of dance music originated in Abidjan in 2002 by Ivorian DJ Douk Saga, now the most widely listened-to music genre in Francophone Africa) is characterised by its bouncing bassline, call-and-response vocals and complex footwork dance style. The name roughly translates as “cut and run” — a reference to the hustler identity of young Ivorians working abroad and sending money home.

45 min from Abidjan. Grand Bassam (UNESCO World Heritage Site) — a 19th-century French colonial port town on a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic and the Ebrié Lagoon, with French colonial government buildings and merchant houses in various states of photogenic decay, the finest beach immediately west of the colonial quarter (calm, clean, with local fishing boats), and a busy Sunday market of Akan cloth (kente-adjacent woven fabrics).

💡 Grand Bassam was the first capital of Côte d’Ivoire under French colonial rule (1893–1900), abandoned after a series of yellow fever epidemics killed the colonial administration. The French moved the capital to Bingerville, then eventually to Abidjan. Grand Bassam’s colonial buildings, abandoned when the colonial function moved, have survived in a state of photogenic decay for 120 years.

1h30 from Abidjan. Assinie — a narrow peninsula of Atlantic beach between the ocean and the Tendo Lagoon — has consistently been described as the finest beach in West Africa. The Atlantic side has strong surf (surfing popular); the lagoon side is flat and calm for swimming. Assinie was the location of Henri Verneuil’s 1973 film “Le Clan des Siciliens” and Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s most famous aerial photographs.

💡 Assinie was briefly the capital of Côte d’Ivoire under the French before Grand Bassam — it was the first permanent French settlement in the region (1687). The beach was later used as a location for several French films and became a hideaway for Paris’s creative class in the 1970s.

4h from Abidjan. Yamoussoukro — the administrative capital of Côte d’Ivoire (the political capital, the largest city, is Abidjan) — with the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace (completed 1990, larger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the largest basilica in the world by area at 30,000m², built by President Félix Houphöet-Boigny as a personal act of faith and gift to the Pope, who consecrated it) and the Sacred Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro.

💡 The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro cost an estimated US$300 million to build at a time when Côte d’Ivoire’s economy was in severe difficulty. Pope John Paul II consecrated it in 1990 on the condition that a hospital be built alongside (the Polyclinique exists but has been poorly funded). The building seats 7,000 inside and 11,000 in the external colonnades; it is rarely more than 10% full.

5h from Yamoussoukro. Man — the gateway to the western mountains (Dent de Man, 1,032m — the distinctive “tooth” peak visible from the city) — with traditional Dan and Guéré mask culture (the west of Côte d’Ivoire is the heartland of African sacred mask tradition, used in initiation rites and judicial proceedings; the wooden Ge mask of the Dan people is one of the most collected objects in African art history) and the suspended bridges over the Cavally River.

💡 The Dan (Yacouba) people of western Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia are masters of the Ge mask tradition — each mask represents a specific spiritual force and is owned by a lineage, not an individual. The masks are “activated” in ceremonies that combine music, dance and costume into a complete spiritual performance. Museums worldwide hold thousands of Dan masks; none is as powerful as one in active ceremonial use.

1h flight from Abidjan or Man. Korhogo — the capital of the Senufo people in the north of Côte d’Ivoire — with the Kufulo sacred forest (where the Poro secret society has held initiations for centuries), the Senufo painted cotton cloth (Kolougbà — hand-painted with mud and plant dyes in geometric and figurative patterns, sold in the Korhogo market at CVF 3,000–10,000 per metre) and the Senufo blacksmiths (hereditary metal-workers who also serve as diviners). Fly from Abidjan (ABJ).

💡 The Poro society of the Senufo people is one of the most significant male initiation institutions in West Africa — the Poro forest school (lasting up to 21 years in the traditional form, reduced to several weeks in modern practice) transforms boys into men through a curriculum of moral, spiritual, practical and social education. Women are forbidden from the Poro forest; to see the Poro mask (“the spirit of the forest”) means death.